


Cast Your Bread Upon the Water

by anneapocalypse



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Brotherhood of Steel - Freeform, Canonical Character Death, Enclave, F/F, F/M, Flashbacks, Memories, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Project Purity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 04:14:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7493436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneapocalypse/pseuds/anneapocalypse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two decades ago, the Brotherhood of Steel guarded Project Purity, and three scientists from a shadowy past on the far coast worked and lived not only as partners but as family. Now, in the wreckage of the life she spent two decades rebuilding, Madison Li strikes up an unexpected friendship with Star Paladin Erika Cross in the Citadel. Divided in philosophy, ideals, and just about everything else, Madison's conversations with Erika will nonetheless help her divide the past from the present, and find a way forward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
>   * Multiple canonical character deaths, as mentioned above. No non-canonical deaths.
>   * Mentions of Enclave and Brotherhood prejudices as they exist in-world. Brief but worth noting.
>   * Mentions of the Enclave's unethical scientific pursuits.
>   * PTSD symptoms.
>   * Non-explicit sexual content.
> 

> 
> This fic was written for the 2016 Fallout Big Bang. Many thanks to my collaborator, [Ialpiriel](http://ialpiriel.tumblr.com), whose art delights me and with whom it has been a true joy to work. You will find their wonderful illustration in Chapter 5. Thanks to [Larissa](http://archiveofourown.org/users/larissa), my beta reader, and thanks to GhoulMod who's worked so hard to make this event possible!  
> 

_ For nineteen years, your life was your own. _

_ When the Project died, you packed your things (they weren’t many) into an old blue suitcase. One zipper pull was broken and kept going off the track, but the other still worked and the clasp held. Everything you owned and could carry with you was in that suitcase. Anything you couldn’t carry… well, you supposed you didn’t own it anymore. _

_ You wondered how long before the mutants broke the locks on the doors, battered their way inside, smashed everything the three of you had built to pieces. _

_ You looked up the river.  _

_ The boat towered against the yellow-gray sky. It was perhaps a half mile away. Not far. But you had no armor. Only a .32 caliber pistol James had left behind, which you had never fired. You loaded it anyway, six bullets chambered. You remembered to cock it. You held it out in front of you like a stick-up from the old holos. You knew a .32 caliber round would barely break the skin of a super mutant.  _

_ Three weeks since James left with the baby. Daniel had left two days ago, the last to go, with a rucksack and a shotgun and four shells. “I’m sorry, Dr. Li,” he told you. “I really am. But we can’t do this just the two of us, you know that. I’m going upriver. You should come too. It’s not safe here anymore.” _

_ Two more days you held out at the Jefferson, before admitting defeat. _

_ It was morning, the sun was just up, the light very yellow through the low clouds, the smell of early fog clinging to the ground and to you as you stepped outside. Closing the rotunda door behind you and locking it, you listened in the stillness for the familiar mutants’ roar, then you looked up the river. _

_ You walked up the long road holding your suitcase in one hand, your pistol in the other. _


	2. Arrival

Madison Li has been inside the Citadel only once before.

The courtyard smells metallic, steel and gunsmoke and something else—something that makes her dizzy, so that her vision blurs and she sways, feeling ill. The smell is ozone, she realizes—laser weapons. And it’s not just the smell but the _sound,_ laser and rifle fire hissing and cracking and rattling against concrete—it’s just a practice range, Madison, keep breathing, damn it.

“Madison.”

She’s shaking. She feels sick.

“Madison, you should all go inside and get some rest.” Lyons’ brow is creased with concern, but his voice comes from far away. “Please. We’ll sort this all out in the morning.”

“Dr. Li?” The girl’s voice. Big eyes behind thick glasses, hair like a raider. The pieces don’t fit. None of it fits, or makes sense.

“I…” she says.

“Dr. Li,” the girl says again and her voice is trembling too. “Let’s go inside, okay?”

“I need to rest,” she manages, finding her voice. “Lie down, or… or something. This is all just too much.”

“I know,” the girl says, and her voice breaks. “Let’s go inside.”

“Garza,” she says, steadying her voice at least. “He needs medical attention, immediately.”

Garza is wan but still standing, supported by Daniel’s arm around under his shoulders. Thank goodness for Daniel. “I’ll take him to the infirmary,” Daniel says. His eyes narrow. “You people _do_ have an infirmary, right?”

“I’ll take you there.” Golden-haired Sarah Lyons has appeared at her father’s side. “With your permission, Elder.”

“Yes, of course, Sarah, please. Star Paladin, if you would show the doctor and Miss, ah, Garcia-Rivera? yes? to some quarters for the night...”

Daniel and Garza go with Sarah, Alex following, and Madison follows mechanically behind the suit of power armor that escorts her across the courtyard, the girl trailing behind. A scream nearly rises in her throat as they pass close to the rifle range and the shots are right there blasting in her ears, can’t Lyons call them off for one minute, for god’s sake—but then they’re through the double doors, and inside. The girl holds the door for her. Madison forgets to say thank you. She’s trying to fathom the size of this facility, the former Pentagon, endless steel walls and long corridors winding away in all directions, like the tentacles of some great steel sea monster from the old holos.

The girl looks at her fearfully as they walk, an expression Madison can’t tell for intimidation or concern. When she looks back, the girl quickly looks away, staring at the floor instead, her eyes still wide with shock behind her glasses.

The suit of power armor stops by a door and turns to her, and Madison actually looks at the face—dark complected with a strong jawline, silver hair in a neat flat-top, dark brown eyes, a handsome woman, she notes in a detached sort of way. There’s some tug of recognition, a name she should know. She doesn’t know many—Lyons, Rothchild, the girl Sarah. There were others, but… it’s been almost twenty years. And right now the very floor feels ready to drop out from under her. Crane, Crow, Cross. Cross. She should say it out loud, show that she remembers, but forcing the words out seems impossible.

“You can stay here, Dr. Li. And Joan, here across the hall…”

“Joanie,” the girl says in a small voice.

“Beg your pardon?”

“You can call me Joanie. Everyone does.”

Joanie. The girl James’ daughter, the girl Catherine’s daughter, the girl who looks like them but for her hair colored blue and half shaved. The girl who sounds like them. Paladin Cross says, “Joanie, then,” and Madison feels invisible, unreal.

God, she never should have left Rivet City.

“Thank you,” she says mechanically, backing into the room and shutting the door without waiting for a reply. The room is small, and the bed is hard, but no more so than she’s accustomed to, and it’s private at least. Madison sits shakily on the edge of the bed and covers her face with her hands, choking on a scream she cannot release.

She snaps back to reality, mostly from the smell clinging to her sleeves. Everything on her stinks, she realizes, of sewage and ghoul rot, and her shoes are utterly ruined. The black pumps are fine for work where she spends half the day sitting, and she likes the way they look, but had she any inkling they’d be going on the run, she’d have worn her loafers instead. Slogging through the Taft Tunnels in heels was a nightmare, and there’s no salvaging them now, soaked in mud and grime and god knows what. Lucky she didn’t break a heel, and an ankle with it. Perhaps someone can lend her a pair of shoes, preferably something flatter and more sensible. There’s little hope of going back upriver for any of her belongings.

She kicks the shoes under the desk, as far from the bed as possible, and shrugs out of her lab coat, which probably smells the worst of her clothing. Madison balls it up and stuffs it into one of the desk’s metal drawers. Better the drawer than the whole room. Tomorrow she’ll see about having her clothes laundered. See about having a shower. She’ll have to request a change of outfit, as well as shoes. To whom would she speak about that? Madison has no idea. She hasn’t asked what time breakfast is served or where. She doesn’t know her way around at all, and the complex is enormous.

Sighing, Madison begins tugging the bobby pins from her hair one by one, letting her long locks unroll in her hands and fall down to her shoulders. She unpins the little pincurl at her temple, rubs her scalp with her fingers. Finger-combing the tangles from her hair will have to do, in the absence of a brush. Her mouth feels gritty with wasteland dust and grime.

Solitude is such a relief she’s loathe to leave the little room, but she feels filthy and longs to at least wash her face before bed. Madison cracks the door open tentatively, checking to either side for anyone familiar. Satisfied she’ll be left alone, she wanders down the hallway in her skirt and blouse and stocking feet, looking for a bathroom, which she finally locates at the far end of the hallway. A communal bathroom much like Rivet City’s; that, at least, is familiar. Foggy mirrors, running water. There are shower stalls, too. Remember that for the morning. For now she splashes water on her face, rubbing her temples and the bridge of her nose. The lines around her eyes appear to have deepened in the course of a day.

There are no towels in the bathroom, so she dries her face on the sleeve of her blouse, which is at least cleaner than her coat.

For tonight, there’s nothing to be done but retire to her room and try to sleep.

 

Through two walls of steel, she can hear the girl sobbing across the hall.

She waits for tears of her own, but feels numbness instead.

 

_On the landing at the top of the rusty metal stairs, you pressed the button for the intercom. Where would you go if they refused to let you in? How would you live? They would take you in. You would make them. You would tell them something. Make yourself valuable. You’d learned to do that before._

_“State your business in Rivet City,” the voice crackled through the speaker._

_“I’m a scientist,” you said. “I’m here to offer my services.”_

_“Your name?”_

_“Dr. Li.”_

_Silence. Then:_

_“Extending the bridge. Chief Danvers will want to speak with you before you board. Maybe we got a place for you, maybe we don’t. You’ll surrender any weapons, and no funny stuff. Got it?”_

_“Yes.” You wouldn’t need the gun here. You didn’t want it anyway._

_There was a screech of rusty metal, and the bridge swung out to meet you._

_For nineteen years, Rivet City would be your home._

 

She awakens with a start to a knock at the door. There is no clock in the small room, and no windows, but she feels at least somewhat rested; it must be morning. She must have slept. The knock comes again, and Madison calls, “Just a moment—” scrambling out of bed for her clothes.

“Good morning, Doctor—it’s Star Paladin Cross. Elder Lyons has requested I escort you to the dining room for breakfast.”

The choice of word, _escort_ , is no doubt just one of those tics of Brotherhood formality. _Show you to breakfast is all she meant_ , Madison thinks, feeling resentful anyway, swiping her blouse off the back of the desk chair. She’s going to look a mess. “Just a moment. I need to dress.”

“I also brought you a change of clothes.”

Why couldn’t she have led with that, then? Madison bites her tongue, knowing her irritation is unfair. “Oh, I—thank you.” She’s already hastily buttoned the blouse halfway down. Good enough to crack the door and peer around it, hiding her lower body behind. She must look ridiculous, her hair lank and messy, her eyes puffy with sleep.

Star Paladin Cross is every bit the gentlewoman, never dropping her eyes far enough to glimpse Madison’s bare legs as she passes the folded clothes through the ungenerous gap in the door. Madison feels a flush creep over her cheeks anyway. There is a threadbare towel in the stack as well, and pair of worn shoes set atop. “Thank you, Paladin.”

The Paladin cracks a brief smile. “You’re welcome. I’ll give you time to bathe and dress. There are showers at the far end of the hallway. You’re welcome to make use of them.”

Madison had no intention of asking permission before showering, but the offer is nice, even if it does sound a little too much like a hint. Bathe, you filthy wastelander. It irks her, even if it just happens to be true in this case. She doesn’t know what to say again, so she nods, and after an awkward pause, Cross nods back and vanishes down the corridor.

Madison shuts the door, drops the folded stack on the bunk and covers her face with both hands, sighing heavily.

 

The shower helps. The water’s clean, and gets _hot_ , more so than she’s been used to at Rivet City, and there’s soap—not the kind the caravans sell, tin cans of softsoap rendered from the fat of some wasteland creature you probably don’t want to know about, but the pre-war kind, hard white bars you have to run under the hot water to soften them up.

Madison washes quickly, mindful that the water is likely rigged to a timer like it is in Rivet City to ration usage, but it lasts longer than she expects, and she stands under the hot spray luxuriating in it until it shuts off. Her wet lips taste like iron.

The clothes are nothing fancy, but they’re real clothes, at least, not patchwork brahmin skin, and they’re clean. The worn loafers are a little wide for her feet, but they’ll do. She buttons the light blue shirt and tucks it into the gray slacks, a little long in the waist but otherwise they fit well enough. Her long, thick hair will take some time to dry—why she washes it as infrequently as she can get away with—so she’ll have to go to breakfast with it down, which is uncomfortable. Madison Li is accustomed to presenting herself as professionally as possible, clothes neat and clean and hair neatly up, practical enough for lab work and poised enough for a City Council meeting. Respect, she has learned, has to be not just earned but demanded, with every word and with every step. She’s unaccustomed to letting her hair down in public—literally or figuratively. And the Citadel is far from her comfort zone, even if she has just let Lyons’ right hand all but see her in her underwear.

What a week it’s been.

She draws a straight part down the left side of her hair with the end of a bobby pin, finger-combs it all out the best she can, and makes a mental note to ask for a proper comb.

The Paladin is waiting when Madison emerges from her room. “If you bring your clothes to the laundry chute, we’ll see that they’re cleaned and returned to you.”

“Thank you,” Madison says stiffly.

Their first few steps are in silence. To break it, she asks, “Are you always in armor, even inside the Citadel?”

"A Brother well equipped is a Brother keeping to his duty," Cross says simply. Some Brotherhood slogan, no doubt. The rote quality of it makes Madison bristle slightly.

"Or hers?" she questions, raising an eyebrow.

Cross nods. "Of course."

"Then why not say so?"

"Here, 'Brotherhood' is understood to mean all of us, regardless of gender," Cross replies, unperturbed. "I assure you, there is nothing exclusionary about it, nor do Brothers receive different treatment based on gender. We are defined by role and rank, not by sex."

"Then why not use neutral language?"

"Sometimes one must choose between brevity and precision, Doctor."

Something in her tone makes Madison glances at her, looking for a hint of a amusement, but Cross’s features have already settled back to neutral. "You could’ve been the Fellowship of Steel, or the Community of Steel, or… I don’t know. There are certainly neutral options no more cumbersome than _Brotherhood_."

"That is not what the Founders chose for us."

Madison gestured to their surroundings. "Well, neither is this, is it?"

Cross pauses for a moment before replying. "Not all of it, no."

 

_The lead scientist was a gruff man, with little patience for pleasantries. You didn’t mind. It was easier when people were direct. “I understand you want to join my science team. Tell me why I should want you.”_

_“I’m a botanist. I have extensive experience with hydroponics and water purification.”_

_“Where’d you train?”_

_“A private lab outside the Capital Wasteland.” It wasn’t technically a lie. Depending on how you defined “private.”_

_“Hmph. Well, I’ll tell you this, Doctor. Our main priorities right now are defensive weaponry and getting this damn boat floating again, ‘stead of setting on the river bottom half full of mirelurks and irradiated water. What do you suppose you can contribute to that effort?”_

_“I’ve worked with fusion generators on both a large and small scale, as part of my water purification work.”_

_The man grunted again. “Well, I’ll think it over. Haven’t got much need for a botanist here. Lurk hunters and the caravans supply us with all the food and medicine we need.”_

_You hesitated, then went for it._

_“A lack of fresh fruits and vegetables in the diet leads to serious nutrient deficiencies presenting a variety of symptoms, many of which are evident in the residents of this city, Dr. Pinkerton. I believe I could—”_

_“‘Nutrient deficiencies,’ what are you, some kind of goddamn vault dweller? We make do just fine, thank you very much. When your medical opinion is wanted, Doctor, you’ll be asked for it. In the meantime you can see yourself out while I consider your resume. Good day.”_

 

Breakfast is a bit more prepackaged and pre-war than Madison was expecting: Sugar Bombs and tinned meat, ancient meals-ready-to-eat. Suppose it’s no surprise given the Brotherhood’s vast stockpile of military supplies, and she knows those packs, remaining properly sealed, have effectively no expiration date. Not as though she didn’t grow up on prepackaged Vault-Tec fare.

Still, it’s a far cry from her usual mirelurk omelette at the Weatherly. For all her skills with edible plant life, Madison has never counted actually preparing and cooking her produce among them. Vera is kind enough to slice the occasional pepper or green onion into her omelette, when Madison has the surplus to bring up. It’s a privilege, she knew, but she deserves to taste the fruits (and the roots) of her hard work, at least now and again. Mirelurk eggs make a good meal—slightly oily in texture but hearty and packed with protein and other nutrients, and the steady supply of mirelurk meat and eggs makes them a staple of Rivet City cuisine. Gary’s hobby is coming up with new ways to cook them, though the fried cakes remain his specialty, and a local favorite. Madison dreams of the day when their hydroponic bay truly produces enough to fill in those nutritional gaps. Imagine fresh salads, crisp and green. Imagine _spices._ It’s a real possibility, but they’ve so much further to go.

She passes over the Sugar Bombs. Never had much of a sweet tooth, unlike Janice, who lives—who lived off the stuff. No milk. Janice was lactose intolerant. Just ate it by the handful.

When she catches herself thinking of Janice in the present tense, there’s a screech in her head, fast-forwarding to that moment in the Rotunda when the Colonel drew his magnum and fired. Janice’s eyes closing as she slumped against the plexi, bleeding out behind an impenetrable barrier.

Yesterday. _Yesterday._

Because she trusted James, again.

She’s quickly losing her appetite.

Madison collects herself some sort of dry, flavorless confection resembling a danish, and a cup of black tea. No coffee to be had here. The tea will have to do.

Cross settles at a table with her, which Madison expected, though privately she wishes she could eat by herself.

“You should eat something with protein,” Cross offers. Madison can’t help but notice she hasn’t gotten any food for herself. She folds strong brown hands in front of her on the table, the gesture casual, but Madison can’t get over how odd she looks tucked into a diner booth in her massive suit of power armor. “You need your strength. I recommend the salisbury steak. It is surprisingly palatable.”

“I’m a pescatarian.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“I don’t eat red meat.”

“Ah.”

An awkward silence ensues. Madison chews on her danish. “You’re not eating?”

“It’s not necessary for me to eat.”

Madison pauses with her mug halfway to her mouth. “I beg your pardon?”

Cross laughs, startling her. “I’m sorry. I forgot, you wouldn’t know. It has been a long time, hasn’t it?”

Madison blinks.

Cross taps two fingers against the breastplate of her armor. “I’m as much steel and circuit as flesh under this armor, Doctor. It was… necessary, after some injuries I sustained in the field.”

“‘Some’ injuries? They must have been quite serious.”

“Indeed. Were it not for Scribe Rothchild’s ingenuity, I would not be standing before you.”

“Or sitting.”

The Paladin pauses, then cracks a smile. “You always were a woman of precision, Doctor Li.”

She isn’t being precise. She’s being nitpicky, out of annoyance and sheer mental exhaustion. Cross is just being good-humored about it. Madison feels a twinge of remorse, and goes silent for a moment as she finishes her danish. After swallowing the dry pastry, she adds, “But you must still require nutrition?”

“Oh, certainly, but the nutrient formula I receive is far more efficient. Digestion is… imperfect, in my present condition. I am still _able_ to eat, if that’s what you’re wondering. But as I have no need to, I prefer to conserve our rations for the rest of my Brothers, who could not survive as I do.”

Madison takes a sip of her tea. “I’ve never heard of the Brotherhood using cybernetic augmentations before. That is what we’re talking about, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It is not normally done. I am grateful for Rothchild’s resourcefulness, as well as for Elder Lyons’ intervention on my behalf.”

Madison has a lot more questions, but instead she swallows the last of her tea and says, “I should check on Garza. Will you point me to the infirmary?”

“Yes, of course, Doctor. I’ll take you there now.”

 

_You didn’t wait for Pinkerton’s decision. Your proposal and request for a small laboratory space was submitted to the Council the next day._

_You found out later that Daniel had vouched for you, both your entry to the city and your proposal. They only gave you a tiny corner of the science bay, conditionally, but it was enough. Enough to get started._

_It was a long process, winning your place in Rivet City—winning respect, and the resources that came with it. A better variety of food was a tempting prospect, and the members of the science team were intrigued—much to Dr. Pinkerton’s displeasure. Perhaps he, of all of them, might have questioned where you’d acquired those precious seeds, carefully wrapped in scraps of plain brown canvas. But even he did not voice those questions._

_In the privacy of your little room, with a book of matches palmed from the counter at the Weatherly, you burned the original packaging with the flag of the old world embossed like a brand on the bright paper._

_Inexplicably, a whiff of something familiar lingered in the smoke that hung over the wastebasket. You sat on the bunk for a long time, trying to separate that faint scent from the smell of ash. Trying to remember who or what it was._

 

“Oh, Dr. Li!”

The girl rises from one knee, before the open control panel of a weathered Mister Gutsy. Madison takes an instinctive step back, but Joan adds quickly, “He’s all right, Doctor. This is Sawbones, their medical bot. I’m just, well, giving him a tune-up.”

There’s still something so jarring about the voice—so much like Catherine at that age. If you put her behind a curtain— Though it was the eyes that did it, the first time, when Joan came into her lab, a wasteland-rough stranger, hair shaved on both sides like a raider, black mercenary combat armor, Chinese assault rifle on her back. It was her teeth that gave it away first, a smile full and bright—no raider had teeth like that. Then her eyes—Joan wore glasses, thick enough you could see the distortion at the edge of the lenses, but behind them, deep brown eyes, heavy-lashed. Catherine’s eyes.

How she got into the lab past security Madison couldn’t imagine at the time, though she can now, after seeing her in the tunnels. Joanie can be quiet as a mouse, even in armor, even with her hair the same bright blue as a Vault suit and spiked high down the middle of her scalp. She moved like a ghost in the shadows, picking off black-suited soldiers with quick, precise blasts from her sniper rifle, while Madison could hardly breathe for terror.

It’s somehow even more unsettling to see her out of armor. Joanie wears only fatigues and a white t-shirt, worn and dingy but nonetheless bright against her dark skin. Her complexion is closer to Catherine’s, but with James’ warm undertones. Her jawline is his, and the angle of her nose—no, there’s some of both of them there. God damn it. Stop this. _Stop seeing them._

“Good morning,” Madison says, stiffly.

“Oh—good morning.” The girl sounds sheepish, and her eyes dart away as though she’s committed some misstep. From the heavy circles under her eyes, she didn’t sleep much. Madison wonders how long she’s been awake.

But Garza, at least, lies snoring healthily on the far bunk, with Daniel still at his side, a hand resting over that of the sleeping man, and Madison sighs with measured relief. “I’d like to speak with the doctor on call.”

“You’re lookin’ at him,” Joanie says wryly, patting the robot on the chassis, at which it utters an indignant noise and floats out of her reach. “His medical subsystem wasn’t, uh, functioning to standard. I’ve been digging into his programming, though. Should be more helpful now.”

Madison sucks in a sharp breath and shoots a look at the Paladin. “ _This_ is the closest thing you have to a doctor?”

“We have been screening recruits to fill the position,” Cross replies, matter-of-factly. “So far, unfortunately, none have shown the necessary aptitude.”

“I’m truly shocked,” Madison mutters under her breath. No doctors. No medical staff. No wonder the Brotherhood is in such miserable shape these days.

This time it’s Cross who shoots her a look. “In the interim, Sawbones has served as an… adequate substitute.”

Joan makes a noise that sounds very much like a snort, quickly turned into a cough.

“I’ll not have that _thing_ laying a pincer on Garza, if you please. He’s been through quite enough.”

“He seems to be doing all right,” Daniel interjects, looking up from his vigil, eyes as heavy with exhaustion as Joanie’s. “Hasn’t done much but sleep since we arrived.”

“I came to check on him first thing this morning,” Joanie says earnestly. “His heart rate’s normal, Doctor Li.” She adds quickly, “I’m… I’m no doctor, but I have some medical training.”

“From your father.”

“Yeah.”

The room goes painfully silent for a long minute.

Madison remembers their run through the tunnels, stopping Garza to rest when he clutched at his chest, his breath wheezy. The five stimpaks the girl produced without hesitation from her pack. How she took them with barely a thanks, turning to tend to Garza who was crouched shakily with his back braced against the wall. From under the loose collar of her shirt, Madison can make out the corner of the medical tape diagonal across Joan’s breastbone, holding gauze over a wide plasma burn. Gnarled, raised wounds spot both arms, as well as a raw patch across one cheekbone. There will undoubtedly be scarring.

“I want him on bed rest until further notice,” she says firmly. Perhaps excessive, but she’s lost half her team already. She can’t bear the thought of losing anyone else. “Dan… you should get some sleep.”

“I slept some.” Daniel shrugs. “Alex said he’d come back to sit with him after breakfast.”

Joanie wipes her hands off on her fatigues and digs a somewhat crushed packet of Fancy Lads out of a cargo pocket. She looks very mousey with her big earnest eyes and prominent front teeth. “I can stay here and watch him.”

Star Paladin Cross interjects, “Actually Joan, Scribe Rothchild would like to see you as soon as possible. You as well, Doctor Li.”

Joanie nods and tears into the box of Fancy Lads in her hands, evidently her breakfast. “Okay.”

“I can escort you there now, if you’re ready.”

“Actually... ” Joanie’s hands fidget on the packet. “I know the way to the lab—” Madison’s eyebrows shoot up, “—and Doctor Li and I could use some time to talk. If you don’t mind, of course, Paladin.”

There’s a notable pause before Cross replies, “Yes, of course.” Madison wonders what the odds are that Lyons gave orders to keep an eye on all of them, inside his precious Citadel. It hasn’t stopped Joan from poking around, evidently, or from reprogramming his robot.

Joanie waits until they’re safely out of sight of the others before biting into a snack cake, seeming to relax a bit. The girl chews thoughtfully and, to her credit, swallows before speaking again. “What’s our next step here, do you think? Will they help us?” She lowers her voice, almost conspiratorial, giving Madison a sudden urge to laugh, of all things. “The Brotherhood, I mean.”

“I don’t know, Joan. I’ve hardly had time to collect myself since we arrived.”

“Oh.” Joanie nods, appearing chastened. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

The girl opens her mouth as if to say something more, then returns to her snack cake, the thought apparently abandoned. A silence hangs between them, and Joanie nods them around the next corner and the next without a word.

Madison notes, not for the first time, how muscular Joanie is, well-defined biceps showing under her t-shirt. She shouldn’t be surprised; the girl’s been surviving out in the wasteland for months. But neither James nor Catherine were physically inclined. They were scientists, buried in their experiments and hunched over their desks, ruining their posture over ancient computer terminals. Joan has the makings of a scientist herself—she certainly possesses the aptitude and the interest. James’s medical training, the technical knowledge to understand the workings of the purifier. Yet something about her is harder to categorize, impossible to pin down. In Madison’s mind she is always shifting, changing from raider to mercenary to doctor to scientist—the hair, the armor, the glasses, the hesitance in her voice and the inscrutable angle of her mouth when she goes silent.

 

_Daniel put in extra hours just to work with you. Eventually he left Pinkerton’s team entirely. Then one of Pinkerton’s own scientists followed, asking to join your team. Then another, and another._

_You needed more space in order to continue. More resources._

_Your proposal was presented to the Council in the form of a single, fresh, radiation-free carrot._

_Pinkerton looked upon you with open hatred after that, but you just smiled._

_The science bay was now divided equally between the two of you, right down the middle, but as far as you were concerned, you’d already won._

 

“Ah, Joan, Dr. Li, thank you for coming.” Rothchild rubs his hands together. “I’d like to get started as quickly as possible. With the purifier in the hands of the Enclave, we really haven’t any time to waste.”

Of course. _Now_ they care. They abandoned her just as James did nineteen years ago, but now that the Enclave have the purifier, _now_ we mustn’t waste any time. It’s the response Madison expected, was counting on. She resents it anyway.

“Joan, may I start by saying how sorry I am for your loss. I was acquainted with your father, many years ago. The world has lost one of its few remaining visionaries.”

“Thank you,” Joanie says, casting a pensive glance in Madison’s direction. She swallows, looks back to Rothchild. “Before—before the purifier was taken, I collected some of my father’s notes from the Memorial. I know what we need to make it work, and if I can—”

But Rothchild cuts her off. “Joan, I’ll be frank. However important that purifier may be to you, it pales in comparison to the threat we now face from the Enclave. All of my efforts must now be devoted to assessing the threat they pose to us, and how to counter that threat.”

Joanie shrinks a little. “Oh. I mean—I understand. I just wanted to know if you knew where I could find a G.E.C.K.”

Rothchild’s eyes widen. “A _G.E.C.K.?”_

“Rothchild,” Madison interjects, drawing a surprised squint from the Scribe, “this is what I was trying to tell Lyons last night, when we arrived. James found the answer to making the purifier work, and the Enclave cannot be allowed to get to it first. They got to the Jefferson so fast—you don’t understand, it was like they’d been watching us the whole time. They must know where James’ research had led him—they could be sending a team there as we speak.”

Rothchild scratches his head, looking skeptical. “Frankly there are those who doubt such a thing even exists, never mind works.”

“It exists,” Joanie says firmly, straightening a little, seemingly emboldened by Madison’s support. “I know for certain it does. I have evidence, vault records, my father’s research. I just need to know where to find one. You won’t have to spare any manpower. I’ll go get it myself!”

Rothchild sighs. “Well. If you share your father's determination, I may be able to assist you in locating one. In the archives upstairs is an old, pre-war Vault-Tec terminal. I will send word that you need access to it, and you’re welcome to whatever information you find there. But I wouldn’t advise getting your hopes up. In the meantime your skill set could certainly be of use in more pressing matters.” He turns his gaze to Madison, continuing, “Which brings me to why I called you both here, particularly you, Doctor Li. We must resume work on Liberty Prime at once, and your expertise will be needed.”

Madison furrows her brow. “Liberty Prime?”

The Scribe gestures toward the center of the lab. “See for yourself.”

Madison looks, and starts. She had paid little attention to what appeared to be a sort of freight lift running the full height of the laboratory, crowded with some sort of machinery of no interest to her. What might be mistaken for pistons are in fact legs, grooved steel legs extending up and up to a crudely shaped torso, two arms outfitted with heavy weaponry, and looming three stories above, an almost cartoonish metal head. The thing might have stepped out of the pages of a pre-war comic book, but it’s here before them, standing harnessed in what looks to be some kind of gantry far above, in what was once the Pentagon of the United States. An enormous robot equipped for combat.

“Good heavens,” says Madison.

“Magnificent,” Rothchild says, gesturing with obvious pride, “don’t you think? At least he will be, once all systems are operational.”

“It doesn’t work?” Joanie asks, stepping closer and craning her neck. Pushing her glasses up her nose to peer up the long open column of the elevator shaft, she looks more mousey than ever.

“It's the energy consumption. Something that big, with such advanced weapons systems... we just don't have the means to power him. Not yet. That’s where you come in, Doctor Li. I know you faced numerous power issues with Project Purity, and I know you’ve done work on the reactor in Rivet City.” (How _does_ he know that, she wonders—have _they_ been watching her as well? From afar all these years?) “I’m going to put you in charge of isolating and rectifying the problems with Prime’s power supply. It’s the only way we stand a chance against the Enclave.”

Power. It’s always power they want. Not plants, not water, not _food sources_ that could change the lives of everyone for a hundred miles. Nuclear power, and weapons. It’s the same story everywhere she goes.

And it’s what they need now, if they’re ever to take the purifier back. Even she has to admit that.

“All right,” she says. “Where shall I begin?”


	3.  ...

_For nineteen years, you lived as equals and you lived by luck._

_You took your schooling seriously, all three of you. Catherine liked chemistry—the raw elemental makeup of all things, the underlying structures of matter. You liked biology, the science of living things and their building blocks. James preferred medicine—science applied and applied again to the art, as he called it, of healing._

_Maybe that was why they chose you. You were told it was a lottery, random chance that the three of you were selected. But if growing up in Vault 21 taught you anything, it was that luck was part chance and part skill, the ratio of one to the other determined by the game you were playing._

_You were bright kids, straight As, you’d been working in the lab since you were sixteen, for the good of the vault. At nineteen your life was pleasant and predictable: studies and lab work by day, evenings spent in the diner or the atrium together, pressing the random button on the jukebox again and again, and playing the tables. You thought you knew the game._

 

_The day the Overseer called the three of you to her office, you had just come from lunch in the diner. You can still remember the blue ribbon coming untied from Catherine’s hair, her laughter when James pulled it loose with his teasing grin. He hadn’t grown the beard yet, and his smile at nineteen was still boyish._

_“We’re leaving the vault?” Catherine said, wide-eyed._

_“That’s right. You’ll be going to the surface to study science and medicine. You’ll have opportunities far beyond what Vault 21 could ever offer you. You’ll be doing important work.”_

_You saw James lean forward in his chair at that phrase, important work._

_“Why us?” you said, dismayed. You liked the vault. You liked your lab, the hydroponics bay, the comfortable blue glow of the halide lights. You assumed you’d one day take charge of food production and no one seemed to disagree. And now it was all to be taken away._

_“Just your luck,” the Overseer said gently. She’d only been Overseer for a few months, but she’d swept the Games to take the position and there could be no doubt that luck was on her side, at least for now. If she said it was your luck, then so it was._

_“Who will we be working for?” James asked._

_The Overseer smiled. “For America.”_


	4. Holding Pattern

Wherever she goes, it seems, there is steel. Steel walls, steel corridors, steel doors and ceilings. Madison supposes she should feel at home, at least in that sense.

She should be grateful for the private room—she _is_ grateful, but it also serves as a reminder of how the Brotherhood’s ranks have thinned. Mutants, radiation, “natural” deaths or what could be considered such in this environment, and of course the loss of the Outcasts.

“You’re short on soldiers?” she asks Sarah Lyons.

“Recruits, no, soldiers, yes,” the Sentinel replies tersely, and the scene in the general mess hall in the mornings seems to support her words. Clusters of recruits munch on Sugar Bombs and chatter wildly about “overlords” and “behemoths,” in a manner that makes it abundantly clear none of them have ever seen one. Madison strongly prefers the smaller dining room to the din and clatter of the mess hall, and the diner-style booths are comfortably familiar.

It’s still strange to see Sarah grown and commanding her own unit—Sarah who’d been just over waist-high with her hair in braids when last Madison saw her. She’d never spoken much to the child—Madison never had much to say to children—but it had been apparent even then that Sarah would grow up to join the ranks of the Knights and Paladins. Her father had already begun teaching her to fire handguns and laser pistols.

And now, she leads the most promising squad. Lyons’ Pride, in every sense. The old man’s eyes do brighten whenever she passes and whenever he speaks of her, and he keeps saying that with the help of Liberty Prime, the Pride will surely take back the memorial. Madison can’t quite muster the same optimism. Everybody thinks they have a last, best hope. She thought she had one, too. Bet everything on him.

 

_The surface was bright, so bright._

_You had all three been issued white hazmat suits for your departure—flimsy, unarmored things of a plasticky material that bagged around your knees, the elastic cinching awkwardly at your waist. The helmets were great shiny bubbles, like the space suits the astronauts wore in the books and holos you saw as children. The First Man on the Moon! One small step for a man, or a woman._

_Your boots hit bare ground and James, reckless James, took his helmet off and turned his face to the sky. His olive-brown skin took on a new radiance in the sudden sunlight, gold undertones you’d never seen so richly in the blue-tinted vault lights. Catherine did the same, and you followed, and even as you gasped and squinted in the sun, you saw the way her brown eyes sparkled with its brilliance, so many facets of warm color you had never seen before._

_You began to register your surroundings—a long broken road, deserted but lined with many tall buildings, spires stretching toward the sky, strange and fantastic signs—The TOPS, Lucky 38—that even in the dust and desolation you could imagine had once been bright and filled with color. Still you could not stop staring at Catherine. Her eyes darted around, taking it all in, and she laughed with delight, her wonderful, musical laugh._

_“Put your helmets on.” The voice snapped you back to earth at once, though you almost mistook your escort for a robot, in that black armor that gleamed in the sun, the strange bug-eyed helmet looking like a great mutated insect. “It’s not safe out here. Follow me.”_

_“Where are we going?” you asked, swaying slightly as the long view came into focus, the line where sky met land so, so far away down the long road. Catherine took your hand, and she steadied you._

_“You’ll see,” the voice said tersely, slightly distorted through the strange helmet. “The name won’t mean anything to you. Come. We’ll brief you further in the air.”_

_Catherine’s voice was odd through the helmet she had settled back over her head, as though speaking from just underwater. “The air?”_

_You followed James’ gaze, Catherine followed yours, and you saw it, parked in the dusty courtyard across the road—a great metal thing for which you had no name, with a strange narrow tail and two X-shaped sets of blades atop._

_The voice behind the black helmet snorted. “Did you think we were walking?”_

_You did think that, of course you thought that. It had not occurred to you to think otherwise._

_“Climb in,” the voice said, and you did, one by one, Catherine and James and you. You were ushered into a back compartment of “the bird,” as the voice called it. (“Vertibird,” you would later learn.) You took seats, strapped in as you were instructed, and a great rumble above the metal frame filled your ears. You felt the bird lift._

_In the air—you had heard of the surface, but the_ air.

 

_In the air, the voice introduced herself as Lieutenant Foster of the Enclave of the United States._

_You would not see her face by the light of the sun._

_Your destination, you were told, was called Yerba Buena Island. What were you expecting? Something befitting the name, perhaps, a green place—something preserved or restored to its pre-war lushness. No such thing awaited you. You touched down hours later, on a tarmac enclosed within high concrete walls topped with turrets and barbed wire. Though the wall was cracked and crumbled in places, the turrets lived, turning their gun barrels this way and that, watching the perimeter like all-seeing eyes._

_In a semicircle contained inside the wall stood the husks of several houses, blasted and charred. Lieutenant Foster did not look at them, acted as though they were not there. She marshalled you three from the bird, and led you off the tarmac, through a narrow gate in the wall, leaving the ruined houses behind you. You kept looking back; you’d never seen anything like them, not up close. Had people lived here, more than a century ago?_

_Outside the wall, a long footpath stretched up a hill and you saw water on all sides, heard the gentle slosh of waves against the seawall. You were on an island, and the hill was a point jutting out toward—yes, the sea._

_“Do you know where you are?” Lieutenant Foster spoke suddenly, breaking the silence. James’ brow furrowed, Catherine tilted her head. You wondered how you were meant to know. But then—_

_You looked one way and then the other, taking in all that water. To your right, past the rubble of what appeared to have been a small building of some kind, a narrow double row of wooden posts ran out into the water, laid across here and there with rotting planks. Your vault, you had been told, was located in the state of Nevada, but to you that had meant nothing. Nevada did not exist anymore, the United States of America did not exist anymore, all of that had ended when the bombs fell. There was only the safe symmetrical box of your vault, with its finite apartments, its game rooms and diners and schoolrooms and your laboratory. The old map of the United States in your textbooks was a map of an ancient world, one that no longer existed, a world barbaric and unforgiving, where people had flung great nuclear bombs at one another from across the sea. Your vault had saved you from all that, kept you safe as seedlings under their lightbox, luck the only law, none greater than another._

_But you remembered those ancient shapes, those names. Nevada, then California, then—_

_All that water—yes, the sea._

_“California,” you said, and both Catherine and James looked at you with surprise and admiration. “We’re in California."_

_“That’s right.” There was a lift in the Lieutenant’s tone that had not been there before. You had impressed her. “Welcome to Yerba Buena. This way.”_

 

_The footpath went up and then down again, sloping toward the sea, and a lighthouse stood at the far end of the point. Somehow it was smaller than you had expected, squat and gray and octagonal, intact but for what appeared, as you grew closer, to be a slight lean seaward. Lieutenant Foster pressed a button beside the door, and there was a buzzing sound and the door swung open and you followed her in._

_It was drab inside, bare and gray. It looked as though no one had lived there in a long time, but Lieutenant Foster moved with familiarity, pressed another switch on the wall, and you started as a metal hatch opened in the floor, revealing a long metal stair._

_The lieutenant descended, and you followed._

 

For three days she's been able to pretend Anna might arrive. She might have made it late to the tunnels, followed the trail they cleared—the trail Joan cleared—and she might make it to the Citadel. Anna Holt, she’d told the doorguard, from my science team in Rivet City. Light brown hair about so long. If she comes, you must let her in.

Anna hasn't come. She didn't make it, then. Killed somewhere in the Memorial, or torn apart by ghouls in the tunnels. It’s the same in the end, but Madison wishes she could know, all the same. All the years they've worked together, Janice and Anna deserve better than that. And a proper cremation, at least—or a burial, they’re both wasteland-born; that would be the custom.

If they ever make it back, she’d like to do that for them.

So they are down to four: herself, Daniel, Garza, Alex. Even if they make it back to Rivet City, their numbers are halved. Garza is a hardworking man but no scientist. Alex and Daniel are smart, knowledgeable, and loyal. But Anna and Janice, as well as friends, were her most promising finds in years.

It will set everything back. She’ll have to find more help quickly to keep the lab running. If they make it back at all, and the Council doesn't withdraw their support due to her negligence.

That's what all this is, gross negligence and nostalgic idiocy. The second time in her life she's thrown away _everything_ because of James. Or the third, depending on how you look at things.

Madison rubs the bridge of her nose, staring into her cup of tea as dark and black as she can brew it. The headaches began the second day. What she wouldn’t give for a cup of coffee, even Vera’s terrible pre-war instant stock.

Across the table, Star Paladin Cross regards her with curiosity, hands placidly folded in front of her. The Paladin has met her each morning, accompanied her to every meal. Almost certainly Lyons’ doing, giving her a chaperone. She can’t imagine she’s very good company.

"What is on your mind?"

What is on her mind is five hundred hydroponic specimens. The nutrient solution will last a week. The water will flow uninterrupted, assuming Rivet City's water purifier keeps running and the city's generators don't fail. Theft is less of a concern; even in her absence, security will keep undesirables out of the lab, she can hope. But without attention, the plants will not last forever.

Once the nutrient solution runs out, they will starve, and die. If no one has the foresight to harvest the yield, it will spoil. Months of work, wasted. Just their luck, perhaps, that they haven’t yet produced a high enough yield for the city to become dependent on their produce, but they are so close, have come so far.

The Council will view her absence as an abdication of her duties. Bannon will step in and take her position. Will anyone bother to step outside, look down the river? Will the guards report a high-level military presence at the Jefferson Memorial? Could they fail to notice? Will someone deduce what’s happened to her, and to her team? Will it matter if they do?

Madison runs her thumb around the rim of the mug, thinking of how to condense that into an answer.

Three days ago she wouldn’t have bothered, but she must admit, despite her annoyance at being shadowed, she can find little to complain about in the Paladin’s company. Cross is not the sort who feels the need to fill every second with conversation, and the spaces of quiet between them, if not quite comfortable, are not particularly awkward either.

“My research,” she says in answer. “I understand the urgency of Rothchild’s work on Liberty Prime, but it’s… very important that I return to Rivet City to check on the lab before the week is out. A lot of work will be lost.”

Cross raises her eyebrows. “You wish to return to the city. I had not realized. Your work is botanical in nature, I understand?”

“Yes. It would be only a temporary visit. Just to check on my specimens and refill the nutrient solution.”

Cross nods thoughtfully. “You would require an escort to reach the city safely. I can escort you there and back, if Elder Lyons permits it.”

Madison sits up a little straighter. She’d never expected a real offer of help. “Then you’ll ask him?”

“I will ask.” Cross offers a rare smile. “I may not need to consume food myself, but I can certainly appreciate the value of your work, Doctor Li.”

Was that a _joke?_ Madison suppresses a perplexed laugh. “Thank you, Paladin. I should get to the lab.” She swallows the last of her tea and rises, adding drily, “Can’t keep Rothchild waiting.”

Cross actually laughs. “That’s wise.”

In spite of herself, Madison can’t quite suppress a smile.

 

True to form, Joan has beaten her to the lab. Madison never seems to see her in the mess hall and wonders if, in fact, the girl eats meals, or whether she survives purely on snack cakes and potato chips squirreled away to her room. A true vault child.

It’s still hard to look at the girl, sometimes.

The days she doesn’t bother spiking her hair straight up with some unholy gunk bought from the junk traders, she lets it fall to one side and is constantly brushing bright blue curls out of her eyes. Madison can’t imagine her father approved of it. It seems very un-James. Her mother… well, perhaps Catherine would’ve been a different story.

Even with those Nuka-bottle glasses, it’s so easy to see she has Catherine’s eyes. Her smile—she’s smiling a bit more now—is all James. Her features, the curve of her jaw and the angle of her cheekbones and the shape of her nose, are such a blend of the two it’s hard to look at her, and hard _not_ to. No matter how she tries, Madison can’t stop trying to remember their faces. Catherine’s is a blur of years of trying not to remember. James’ reappearance was so sharp and fresh, it muddled what he looked like twenty years ago, with fewer lines and far less silver in his hair.

If she has to remember at all, she’d rather it be the two of them as they were back then, when they were all together, but when she tries to remember them so young, they both blur into the face of their child, and it gives Madison a chill to study the slope of her forehead, to try and recall whether it is more like James or like Catherine, and to find she can’t remember.

Joan looks downright odd in a lab coat, and yet oddly at home in the lab, her hair not done up today, black roots showing at her scalp. She pushes a stray curl out of her eyes as she leans over the console, listening intently to Scribe Rothchild, nodding along.

She is not Joan’s mother, she reminds herself.

She never wanted to be.

 

_Life at Yerba Buena was good, comfortable. You ate well in the bunker, slept comfortably, and spent your days deep in study. It was clear within the first week that you would learn things here the vault could never teach you. James’ eyes went wide with wonder when first he laid eyes on an Auto-Doc, a miraculous machine that could perform complex surgeries, delicate maneuvers far beyond the capabilities of any Miss Nanny or Mister Handy. Catherine was taken with the rows and rows of chemical compounds in locked steel cabinets, periodic tables and molecular diagrams lining the walls of the chemistry lab._

_And for you—oh, you thought you knew plants. A dozen varieties of a single species now lay at your fingertips. A hundred compositions of soil. Even water itself was no longer the simple thing it had been. And the specimens—oh, the variety, the possibilities. Thousands of specimens, heirloom and engineered, in the Enclave’s seed banks. Much had been lost in the Great War, you learned, but much had been preserved. This was the work of the Enclave of the United States—to preserve, and to rebuild._

_Chemistry, biology, medicine. The tools not just of survival, but of progress. Freedom. Your intake process was completed in short order—a blood test, some paperwork, your signatures contracting you to the service of the Enclave of the United States of America in this year of our Lord 2248._

_Years of study, to earn that title that turned out to mean so much less out in the wasteland, where it was often little more than a self-proclamation: Doctor. Doctor Li, Doctor Garcia, Doctor Rivera._

_And in between, what seemed to you an ordinary life. Meals in the common dining room, lounges for recreation, though the more senior scientists seemed reserved around you three, and you stuck together in your leisure time. The absence of games was strange, but there were books and films and music, and once a month there were dances in the common room, and you traded off partners and took turns leading to the old swing tunes: You and Catherine, Catherine and James, James and you._

_Sunday mornings too were unusual, chapel services with songs you did not know, a complicated set of call-and-responses read from a prayer book, watching the others to see when to sit or stand. You noticed they did not talk about luck here, that rarely did anyone say “Good luck,” but instead, “God bless America.”_

_You did not go to the surface, but that did not seem strange to you, raised underground within steel walls. The bunker was easily as big as your vault, the labs bigger and far more impressive, and you were here among the rebuilders of humanity. Where could you wish you go? Where would you rather be, after all, than here bent over the grow tables thick with bright leaves, rambling happily about soil composition to your laughing Catherine?_

 

Privately, Madison thinks, she understands why Prime was never deployed before the war. The robot packs some firepower, certainly, but all short range, nothing a tank could not have accomplished with some laser turrets and a mini-nuke launcher mounted atop. The so-called “Fat Man” is little more than a glorified slingshot anyway, and Madison can’t imagine the robot’s mechanical arms will do much to improve on its range.

Why, surely a Vertibird is a more tactically sound vehicle, with not only the turret mounts for machine gun or laser fire or whatever custom instruments of destruction the Brotherhood is sitting on, but the advantage of _flight._ The Enclave will have Vertibirds of their own, and more than the Brotherhood, but surely Lyons’ forces are better off mustering their firepower for a swift and forceful assault from above.

No, Liberty Prime is no superweapon, but Madison suspects Rothchild already knows that. What he has in hand is an instrument of propaganda. “Communism” and “Democracy” blared from ancient loudspeakers mean little in the Capital Wasteland today, but the robot still offers a solid three stories of pure intimidation.

She supposes it would dampen the effect considerably if Prime were to grind to a halt halfway up the river, which is what’s likely to happen, at present. She sees the problem immediately, of course, and it’s not unlike the issues they faced early on with Project Purity: the portable fusion reactors are functioning at very low efficiency, producing sizable burst of power but failing to store and utilize it effectively.

It’s not the kind of work she particularly enjoys, but at the very least, it’s a problem she can solve.

 

Star Paladin Cross returns promptly at five minutes to noon to escort her and Joan to the cafeteria. Though she knows the way and could easily tell them to go on without her, thus buying herself a few minutes of privacy, Madison follows without complaint.

They take their food and settle in to eat. Madison pokes at her somewhat gluey tray of macaroni and cheese. After a couple of days avoiding the pre-war food, the Paladin’s advice has sunk in: she needs protein. And a filling meal. Beside her, Joanie sucks down two Nuka-Colas with alarming speed. Cross, as usual, is not eating, but sits opposite them, hands folded in front of her.

“I spoke with Elder Lyons,” Cross breaks the silence, when they’ve both begun to eat. Both Joan and Madison raise their heads to look at her. “I’m afraid he has deferred my request to escort you to Rivet City, Doctor.”

Madison lets her breath out slowly. “Deferred?”

“It may become possible in the future. At present, I am needed elsewhere.”

Joan turns to Dr. Li. “You’re going back to Rivet City?”

There’s no reason for her feel guilt, and yet she does. The girl’s tone isn’t accusatory, though it is—surprised. And maybe just slightly hurt.

“No,” Madison says. “I’m not.” She gives it a beat, then adds, “I had hoped to stop in to monitor my ongoing experiments.” She stops herself from saying anymore, that “the future” won’t be soon enough, the work that will be lost, what’s at stake. It doesn’t matter. It isn’t a priority to anyone but her.

Startling both of them, Joanie exclaims, “I can go to Rivet City.”

“Elder Lyons does not think it advisable for any of us to travel near the Memorial,” Cross says, brow furrowing. “We do not know how strong the Enclave presence is, and they will be looking for both of you.”

Joan sets down her Nuka bottle with a sharp clunk. “I can get past them! You know I can—Dr. Li, tell her, they’ll never see me. I’ll take the metros to Anacostia and approach from the north, I can do whatever you need, just tell me—”

“Joan,” Star Paladin Cross says gently. “Elder Lyons believes your mission to be of primary importance.” She pauses, then adds, “And I agree with him.”

“Mission?”

“Joan has ascertained where a G.E.C.K. may be found.”

Then it’s true. The Garden of Eden Creation Kit. Not that she didn’t believe it was real—that much she knew, though she had never seen one. It is not, of course, the almost mythical device of some stories, but there’s no doubt its contents are extremely valuable. And if James was right, it contains what they need to get the purifier working.

And the Enclave know, surely, where it is located. They may be there already.

“There’s one in Vault 87,” Joanie says. “It was in the salvaged records.”

Madison takes a moment to put the pieces together.

“You’re not sending her there alone,” she says, addressing Cross. “Surely.”

“Absolutely not,” Cross replies. “I will be accompanying her.”

The way Joanie blinks indicates that this is news to her.

Madison purses her lips. “This was Lyons’ idea?”

The Paladin’s expression remains inscrutable. “I volunteered my services.”

So he was going to send her alone, Madison thinks. _All right Madison… calm down… you know as well as I do that the purifier doesn’t work._ But the girl’s made a believer out of him. And out of Cross, too, if her enthusiasm is any indication.

She wonders how selfish it makes her, that in the back of her mind she is still thinking of her dying plants.

“Be careful,” is all she says.

“I will,” Joanie says, and smiles. Wider than she has in days. Madison wishes she understood what there was to smile about.

“We will,” Cross says, her own smile more reserved, but nonetheless present.

 

“Did you ever have a chance to listen to Dad’s tapes?”

They are on their way back to the lab when Joanie poses the question. Madison glances at her. “Which tapes are those?”

“They were in the Jefferson when I got there—the first time, before I found him. Before you all came back. They were journals—records of what he was working on. Mostly from after he left the vault—some from before.” Joanie hesitates, fiddling with one of the dials on her Pip-Boy. “Some of them were—personal. But mostly just about his work. Your work. I copied them all onto my Pip-Boy. I could… make some copies for you, if you want.”

Some of them personal. Madison wonders what those might be.

“Yes,” she says shortly. “I would appreciate that.”

She assumes Joan means whenever she has time. But by the next morning when she and the Paladin depart for Vault 87, Madison finds a neat stack of holotapes left by her workstation, with a handwritten note atop: _For Dr. Li._

 

_The voyage east was not what you expected, any of you._

_The flight to California had been hours, no more, but this would be a much longer journey. Weeks crammed inside the big long-distance Vertibirds, touching down at isolated outposts for sleep and food and refueling and back in the air._

_The destination was a fable in your minds: The Capital._

_Lieutenant Foster did not accompany you east. You traveled under the command of Major Autumn, a humorless, square-jawed man who spoke to you in the same tone he spoke to his troops—when he addressed you at all. More often his orders came through the Captain piloting your bird. Autumn never referred to you or the other civilian scientists by name. “The science staff,” he would say. A dozen of you were being redeployed across the country, to a place you had not known still existed. A dozen science staff and at least twice that many soldiers. The Vertibirds were a small fleet, pushing east in formation while the three of you huddled inside._

_You learned to hate flying. You couldn’t sleep for the noise and the vibration, lost your appetite from the turbulence and the smell of fuel and oil that crept in and hung in the air. The three of you kept each other’s spirits up within your cramped airborne quarters with conversation. What would your new labs look like, what kind of equipment would you have access to—maybe even better than Yerba Buena, which for all its wonder was still a finite space beneath the island. You would be doing important work—they said that a lot, important work, and you all three picked it up and spoke the phrase often. Genetic conservation is important work, you’d say, with the surface flora mutated beyond recovery after the war—this task of preserving the pre-war species, the food sources that kept humanity alive for thousands of years, important work. Catherine liked to tease you, showing off with her knowledge of biochemistry, talking about hydrogen and chlorophyll and ATP. She loved reminding the two of you that her science was the “purest” of the three. “But will it bear fruit,” you said, pulling a wry face at her, and James laughed at the literal side of your double entendre, Catherine at the figurative._

_You read to each other sometimes, from what books you were allowed to bring. James read articles from an old medical journal and then argued with them aloud, repeating the same academic quarrel for two weeks until you both raised your voices in loud but affectionate protest. And both of them took to reading the Bible, because every Vertibird had one, and it was long, more than enough text to last you the journey. James read from the Epistles, fond of the decisive statements of Paul, and the Acts of the Apostles. Catherine preferred the wild poetic verses of Revelation and the Psalms. You were less interested, the God who blessed America still somewhat foreign on your tongue, but you liked Ecclesiastes all right, and the Proverbs. Mostly you liked the way Catherine read them, her voice rich and clear, rising and falling to give drama to the arcane phrases: “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days. Give a portion to seven, and also to eight; for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth…”_

_When words exhausted you and still sleep would not come, their presence was your respite. Your head on James’ shoulder, Catherine’s head on yours. In the cold at higher altitudes over the midwest, you huddled close, you three, clasped hands and closed your eyes together._

_When you remember—it is not a picture but an impression, the slant of gray light from the front of the bird that did not quite reach you at the back, the scrape of James’ stubbled cheek and the softness of Catherine’s hair. Both of them breathing close to you, drowning the endless rumble in the solidness of each other’s bodies, the scent of each other mingled with the damp silver smell of clouds._

 

Steel and ozone seems to cling to Madison’s nostrils, infused into her skin, almost. Her back is sore from bending, kneeling, and climbing all over the gantry in order to assess Prime’s hardware, in order to determine where the problem lies. In fact it might be as much a software issue as well, meaning many more hours bent over a terminal digging through lines of pre-war code. The very thought is exhausting.

The laboratory has quieted of late. Ordinarily she would welcome the peace. But now it is a silence of absence.

She thinks of Joanie’s blue head bent over the console where now Rothchild labors alone. She thinks of Star Paladin Cross, encased in steel, the lines in her face softening with a smile. Lyons has not sent her a replacement escort since they left for Vault 87. Madison walks to the dining room alone, takes her meals in solitude. None disturb her, not even Sarah Lyons, who casts odd looks at her, but keeps her distance, dining with her squad at the long tables in the larger mess hall.

Despite progress on the robot, Madison is overwhelmed more by the day with a terrible sense of pointlessness as she adjusts the coils and calibrates the power relays, trying to get the great tin monster to retain its power. At night, when she retires to her room, she looks at the stack of holotapes on the desk, but does not listen to them.

And day by day, she thinks: she never should have come here.

She never should have left Rivet City.

 

On the third day, she goes to Rothchild.

“Dr. Li,” the Scribe says without looking up from his screen, “you have a progress report on Prime for me?”

“Reginald,” Madison says.

Rothchild looks up.

“Madison,” he says warily, and she feels the full weight of his attention.

“They should have been back by now,” she says, crossing her arms, “shouldn’t they?”

Rothchild releases a long sigh.

“Not necessarily,” he says with reluctance.

“What aren’t you telling me?” She feels helpless with fury, feels like stamping her foot and shouting like a child. Anything to know the _truth_ , to get out of the dark.

Reginald Rothchild stands from his chair, gestures Madison closer so that he may lower his voice, which is worrying in itself. “Madison, if there’s one thing I can be certain of it’s my faith in Star Paladin Cross’s abilities. She’s far and away the most capable and experienced of us all—yes, even Lyons. Whatever they face in that vault, it’s no match for her, I assure you.”

“But,” Madison prompts, trying not to grit her teeth.

“But it’s getting inside the vault that could be the problem.”

“How do you mean?”

“Our scouts haven’t been able to get within a hundred feet of the vault entrance. It’s heavily irradiated.”

“Lethal levels?”

“Many times over.”

“And you _sent Joan_ —”

“Madison, please, give me a little credit. I warned them about the front door, they won’t go that way. There’s a back way in. However…”

“However, if it was easily accessible, you would’ve been inside and stripped the place clean already.”

“Salvaging technology is a part of our mission, Doctor. You needn’t make it sound so cannibalistic. Better it be safeguarded here than left to rot and ruin underground.”

Madison closes her eyes briefly, takes a deep breath. “I’m not here to argue about your Codex, Scribe. Save it for the initiates. I want to know what kind of hell you sent James and Catherine’s daughter into.”

Rothchild looks pained. “She’s not a child, Madison.”

“Barely.”

“And you said yourself that the G.E.C.K. must not be allowed to fall into the Enclave’s hands.”

Madison sighs, feeling suddenly deflated. “Yes… I know. I’m sure it was necessary.” But she finds herself adding, cuttingly, “I’m sure Lyons’ Pride were very busy playing target practice downtown.”

Rothchild’s mouth pinches into a thin line. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Madison?”

“No,” she says tersely. “That’s quite enough, thank you.”

 

_You should have known it was, all of it, too good to be true._

_You should have known._

_It was Catherine who began to uncover things. The Enclave kept a tight grip on its secrets but you were in now, really in—you had your titles, you were being shipped east, where you would descend once again into a locked bunker with strictly enforced security levels. When you touched down, you camped at small outposts fenced in with chain link and razorwire, and always there was a watch, soldiers bearing arms the likes of which you certainly never saw down in Vault 21, not even in the old holos from before the war. Gleaming rifles with plasma chambers glowing green under the white moonlight, like the light from your old Pip-Boys, which you’d had to turn in when you left the vault. You felt that green glow move over you whenever the guards passed near your window in the dark. You remember the hiss, the smell, the sickly glow of some wasteland beast or raider lying seared and half-melted on the ground._

_Of course you were trusted; how on earth would you leave? Where would you go? Of course you were permitted access, gradually and over time, to records of older projects, experiments—the more innocuous ones. You were scientists; you would be expected to perform trials of your own, you must learn from those who came before you, what they had accomplished and the knowledge they had gathered, for America._

_These outposts belonged to you—to the Enclave of the United States of America, little safehouses along the way, doors that sealed, where you could strip out of your hazmat suits for the night and lie close and smell each other’s skin, as you were allowed to do in the air. There was at least one terminal at each outpost and even out here, in the dusty stillness of the midwest, you could access those same databanks you’d had at your disposal back home at Yerba Buena. You began to understand how vast and how great was your America, the Enclave’s network of mainframes stretching across this continent whose breadth you could hardly fathom, even after many long weeks of flight._

_You read whatever the portable terminals would allow; after all, it was a long voyage, and you were terribly bored more often than not._

_Catherine had a knack for... accessing information. A quick mind, quick fingers, an ease with machines that easily matched her aptitude for chemistry. So when the three of you had exhausted your reading and tired of your scriptures, it was Catherine who went digging for more. Catherine who tasted first the fruit of knowledge, then shared it with James and with you._

_Of course your vault was an experiment, you supposed. You had learned that back at Yerba Buena, and that alone had raised no alarm. Who could argue with success? The roll of the dice or the playing of a hand to settle a dispute, the rule of luck to determine leadership. You were surprised to learn that was not precisely what “democracy” meant—you were surprised to learn that the President was elected by delegated vote and not by a game of chance and skill. But to learn that your vault society was a progressive experiment—that was a point of pride, really. After all, your vault had thrived._

_Not every trial, however, was so progressive._

_Perhaps you should have wondered, sooner, why no one could tell you much about the other vaults. How many were there? Oh, quite a few. Were they like yours? Like enough. What kind of democratic system? Oh, various models._

_“Madi, James,” Catherine murmured from the latest terminal at the latest outpost (somewhere near Chicago, you would later estimate), “got some new stuff, some vault records. Want to read when I’m done?”_

_“Always,” James said, eager. “Certainly,” you said, quite curious. You never said no to new reading material._

_Catherine had first dibs, and spent a good hour poring over the new material. With little else to do, you watched her. Watched her brow begin to furrow. Watched her blink and bite her lip. Heard her sharp little intake of breath, saw her hand come up to press tight against her mouth._

_“Catherine,” you said, “what is it?”_

 

_“These records are from before the war,” James said. “They don’t do that anymore. Right?”_

_You lay awake in the night, listening to the snores of your fellow scientists and watching the green glow of the guards’ rifles pass by the door of your little bunkhouse, and you thought, they don’t do that anymore. That was hundreds of years ago. The America that made those vaults isn’t the America you now serve, these aren’t the same people, this isn’t the same democratically elected President._

_They don’t do that anymore._

_By then Catherine was working on decrypting more locked files, following the trail of a word you had heard muttered in passing by the more senior scientists, whose conversations always seemed to dry up when you three came near. An acronym, just three letters: F.E.V._

 

On the fourth day, they hear the rumble of a bird directly over the Citadel.

Madison has to stop herself from diving under the nearest desk and curling up against the steel floor. God, but it shouldn’t come back so easily. The terror leaps into her throat, her breath catches, her mind screams _Run!_ and that will never change. The pulse of those blades beating the sky, the taste of metal in her mouth.

Someone has eased her into a chair. Someone—Alex, has a hand on her shoulder, asking if she needs something, anything, a drink of water—

“Are they here—” she manages, “—are we running again—”

She hears voices, commotion, and the floor swims in her vision. She takes a deep breath. Another. They are not running. She can’t run. She can’t run anymore.

“No, no, Dr. Li, it’s okay.” Alex again. “It’s Joan and the Paladin, they’ve come back.”

 

In a Vertibird?

It’s a good few minutes before she is well enough to stand without getting woozy again. The bird must have landed on the roof, with the Brotherhood’s small fleet. She doesn’t want to see it. She doesn’t want to see the great steel bird, swooping down to take her like in her nightmares.

The lab has emptied—Rothchild, the scribes, gone, but she begins to hear voices and commotion in the corridor, and a minute later, it bursts in, a whole crowd of them. Scribes, Knights, Star Paladin Cross in her gleaming steel armor, her T-45d helmet under one arm, her face solemn. They lock eyes for a long moment. Cross doesn’t look away. Her expression remains guarded, unreadable. But she doesn’t look away.

And there is Joan.

Sarah Lyons practically elbows her way through the cluster of people, Knights and Scribes making way for her. Joan faces her and Sarah says something, her expression pained. Whatever Joan say in reply, however, seems to calm her. Joan smiles, rises on her toes, and kisses Sarah quickly on the cheek, and even from across the lab a faint blush is discernable on the Sentinel’s pale skin.

Joan’s hands are empty. Perhaps she has already given the device to Rothchild—Madison had hoped the girl was smarter than that, but perhaps it can’t be helped. There is Rothchild now, pulling Joanie away from the crowd—and his hands too are empty.

Alex follows close beside her as she crosses the laboratory. Joan is thoroughly taken up talking with Rothchild and Sarah. It’s Star Paladin Cross who takes a step toward her. “Doctor.”

“Paladin.”

“We should speak,” says Cross.

“Perhaps over a cup of tea?” Madison suggests.

Cross’s eyes widen with surprise, but she nods. “That would be—acceptable.”

 

It’s between mealtimes, so the dining room is empty, giving them some peace and quiet. Madison drops teabags into two mugs and fills both with hot water, wishing fervently for coffee—though at least the headaches have tapered off to the dull throb of tension in the bridge of her nose. She sets the second mug in front of Cross, who raises her eyebrows. “Humor me,” Madison says wryly, sliding into the booth. “It’s uncanny to watch you sit there watching me.” Then seeing the deep worry lines in the Paladin’s forehead she thinks better of it, and adds, more gently, “Plus, you look as though you could use a pick-me-up.”

Cross looks surprised, but nods, wrapping her hands around the mug. Strong hands, Madison thinks. Long fingers with a steady grace. “Thank you.” She raises the mug to her lips, hesitates for an almost imperceptible second—something flickers over her features, some uncertainty. It passes just as quickly. She takes a sip of the tea. Sets the mug down, keeping her hands around it. “You will hear this from Joan, I’m sure… she is eager to speak with you.” She pauses, looks Madison directly in the eye. “But I think you ought to hear it from me, as well. That you were correct.”

Madison’s hands still on her own mug. “Correct? About what?”

“About the Enclave. They knew the location of the G.E.C.K. They were there.”

“My god.” Madison stares, a hollow feeling in her stomach. “Is that what happened? Why you were away so long?”

“Yes.” Cross pauses for another swallow of her tea, seeming to take comfort in it this time. “Joan was able to access the vault through Lamplight Caverns, however, I… I could not accompany her inside.”

Only now do the Paladin’s wide brown eyes drop away, and Madison sees it, though restrained: the sag of her mouth, the look of shame.

“I don’t understand,” she says.

“The, ah… residents, of the caverns,” Cross says stiffly. “They would not allow me entrance. Joan was permitted. It seems she has a way with… children.”

“Children!”

“I take it you are not familiar with the settlement of Little Lamplight.”

“I don’t get out much,” Madison says, bewildered.

“Understandably. Joan did not want to provoke an incident. She insisted I wait outside, that she would be fine on her own.” Cross shakes her head. “I acquiesced. I did not know, until I heard the Vertibird…”

Madison sucks in her breath sharply. “They came?”

“They were already there. They took her.”

_“What?”_

“As I said,” Cross says gravely. “I thought you ought to hear it from me.”

Madison braces herself with a swallow of tea.

Whatever it was… they’re back, both of them. Joan is safe. (Absurd, that she should feel responsible for the girl. She is not her mother, and Joan is nineteen, grown, weapon-proficient and built like a mercenary, with her scavenged armor and bold hair and muscular arms, _and yet._ )

“Tell me,” Madison says quietly.

Cross sighs quietly, hands encircling her mug, meeting Madison’s eyes again. “I pursued on foot. It was… difficult to keep pace.”

Madison nods.

“It took me a full day to track them to the base. A place none of our scouts had discovered, far to the northwest—”

Madison holds her breath. She knows. She just needs to hear—

“A place called Raven Rock… Doctor, are you all right?”

Madison releases her breath. “I’m fine.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes. Please—they had Joanie there, at Raven Rock?”

Star Paladin Cross takes a sip of her tea and sets the mug down. Slowly. Studying Madison far more deliberately now. “Yes.”

“But you got her out.”

Cross lets out a rueful laugh. “You give me too much credit, Doctor. Before I was able to secure an entry point, Joan had already executed her own escape plan. She simply picked me up for the ride, so to speak.”

Madison thinks of the Vertibird, familiar faces half in shadow. Two faces, blurring into one. The nose of the bird plunging and pulling up, the drop in her stomach, heavy blades spinning.

She shakes her head. Almost cracks a smile. Joan. Of course.

She ought to have had more faith in the girl, really.

But the G.E.C.K. is out of their hands, and their time is running out, now more than ever.

 

_“We have to leave,” said James._

_James had a certain posture when he made a decision: he leaned forward as he spoke, and looked at you very intensely, as though he could project the force of his will through his eyes. His certainty was sudden. It had not been there yesterday, an hour ago, a minute ago._

_“How?” you demanded. “How, James? Think about what you’re saying.”_

_You felt sick, had felt sick for days. The light had gone out of Catherine’s eyes and she had spent night after night hunched over the the latest terminal, face sickly in its green glow. Trying to understand. Trying to make it make sense. Once, you heard her cry, and you went to her and took her hand, tried to coax her to come to bed. She put her head down on the desk, but instead of weeping she grew silent and still and you stood with your hand on her shoulder, helpless. James had fallen into a fitful sleep, tossing and turning in his bunk, and from your fellow scientists in the adjoining rooms of the little safehouse, only silence._

_You felt trapped, here in the middle of a great silence, a great dark that seemed to cover the whole land, miles and miles and miles of emptiness and you were alone in the vastness of it and there was nowhere you could go, where that great dark night would not touch you._

_You stood there with your hand on Catherine’s shoulder and watched the green glow of the guard’s plasma rifle go by outside the window, and you knew you should never have left Vault 21. Should never have abandoned the safety of your little vault, where everything was fair and equal and just. For this! To become monsters, to make monsters of other human beings._

_You should have known it was too good to be true._

_But there are ways to bring down the sky._

_The bird stuttered and dipped, staggering in the clouds, and Catherine screamed beside you, startling you awake where you had dozed off. You grabbed for her without thinking, and for James, but James wasn’t there._

_The bird swung up and leveled. You shouted James’ name, and Catherine beside you called, “James, what are you doing?”_

_You were on your feet, staggering to the front of the bird, and your feet bumped into your pilot, Captain Iglesia, slumped on the floor, a syringe stuck in the curve of his shoulder, as though some great insect had stung him._

_“What did you do?” you screamed, even before you saw James’ hands on the controls._

_“Madison, Catherine.” He didn’t look back at either of you, just stared, forward, grimly into the thick silver cover of clouds. The bird stuttered again, but stayed airborne. “Just trust me, please. I’ll get us down.”_

_You didn’t quite crash. James managed to maneuver the bird to a rough landing, scraping and bouncing to a halt in a long shallow ravine, while you and Catherine huddled in the back, bracing for impact._

_You scrambled out in shock, your hazmat helmet dangling from one hand, the morning fog still thick all around you. It smelled like clouds._

_James was moving quickly, dragging Captain Iglesia from the bird, plucking the syringe from his shoulder and pocketing it. He hauled the Captain a good distance away down the ravine, and seemed to arrange him on the ground, arms splayed as though he had fallen there._

_“What are you_ doing? _” you choked out, nearly hyperventilating._

_“The emergency kit,” James said in answer, “matches, Catherine, quickly.”_

_Catherine stared._

_“We must hurry. They’ll be descending to look for us any moment.”_

_Catherine staggered to the cockpit, grabbing for the kit fastening to the wall, fumbling inside. “Take the rest, put it in your pack,” James said, taking the matches, and that was the moment you realized he had a pistol. You’d never seen him hold a weapon before. None of you ever had. It looked very strange in his hand._

_“Back up,” James said, waving urgently with the hand that held the matchbook, “everybody back up, hurry, hurry.”_

_Catherine was at your side, clutching your hand. She was still shaking but when you looked in her eyes, they had grown steely with determination._

_“We’re clear,” she said, only a slight tremor in her voice. “Do it.”_

_James fired once, twice, three times, and it took you that long to realize he was aiming for the fuel tank. It took that many shots to penetrate. A thin stream of fuel began to trickle from riveted steel._

_Even at your brief distance the fog made the flame of the match appear muted, unreal, when James struck it._

_Then he was telling you to run and you were all running, you looked back over your shoulder only once— “Don’t look back,” Catherine cried, as though like Lot’s wife you would turn into a brick of salt or whatever the story was—but the flames were still low at that moment, and you kept running and running into the fog and you clung to her hand and you heard the crackle and then the roar at your back and only in your imagination did you see it, the Vertibird that had carried you three thousand miles across America, empty and engulfed in flames, the smell of fuel and ash and burning metal subsuming the wet smell of clouds._

 

“Did you ever encounter them before?”

Star Paladin Cross raises an eyebrow. “The Enclave, you mean?”

They are walking the perimeter of the courtyard. Madison found herself longing for some fresh air after supper, and the Paladin, as usual, offered to accompany her. She can’t say she minds.

The bailey is quiet at this hour, Gunny and the recruits all gone in for the day, the shooting range empty and silent. Madison eyes the shattered concrete as they pass, wondering how many times they have rebuilt that wall, only to shoot it down again in practice. There’s no shortage of scrap concrete and cinder blocks in DC, certainly, but she rather doubts anyone enjoys the responsibility of hauling them back to the Citadel.

The quiet allows her mind to breathe a bit, and allows for the asking of a few carefully worded questions.

“Yes,” she says. “I assume the Brotherhood was… aware the Enclave had a presence in the region?”

“A presence, yes. Though the nature of that presence was unknown. You’ve heard the eyebots, of course—”

“Eyebots?”

“Ah, well, perhaps you hadn’t. We’ve had reports of Enclave eyebots here and there around the Capital Wasteland, mostly just spewing patriotic music and propaganda.” Cross pauses, as though thinking. “But no direct encounters, no. Not in all the time we have been stationed here.”

Madison nods. “And back west?”

“On the west coast, the Brotherhood’s history with the Enclave is a bloody one. The Enclave were all but eradicated from the west coast in the 2240s, or so it was believed. However, Elder Lyons now believes they may have relocated surviving troops to Raven Rock as early as 2242. It is likely they have been rebuilding their numbers underground all this time, waiting for a suitable opportunity to resurface.”

A suitable opportunity, Madison thinks bitterly. The opportunity to steal our work. Did they know, then? Have they known all along? And instead of coming after us, just waited?

Changing the subject, she asks a question to which she already knows the answer. “This chapter has been cut off from the west for some time, yes?”

Cross hesitates a moment before answering. “Yes. The Lyons’ doctrine is… a new direction for the Brotherhood of Steel. A divergence, in the eyes of the Elders back west. In their view of the Codex, we are only to concern ourselves with the acquisition of technology.”

Madison steals a glance at her companion. “And yourself?”

She thinks she sees a flicker of dismay on Cross’s face. “I do not see it that way.”

“You don’t see the Codex as they do? Or you don’t see Lyons as divergent from it?”

“Both, really. The Codex is not simply a statement of our beliefs, Dr. Li. It also holds our history. The western Elders say we have no business with outsiders, but they forget that history. It was not so long ago the Brotherhood allied with the New California Republic to suppress the Enclave remnant, for the good of the Republic and its people. For the good of humanity. True, that alliance did not endure. But to forget that it happened is to forget our history, and to forget history is to forget the Codex. What we did with the NCR was distasteful to some, regrettable to many, but I was there. I do not regret it. It was necessary. And I have no doubt that our actions affected the lives of many innocent civilians, for the better.”

It takes a moment for Madison to process what Cross is saying.

“So you have fought against the Enclave… yourself.”

“I have,” Cross says simply.

Suppress the Enclave remnant. Of course she had heard of the Incident at the Control Station, some years before her recruitment—everyone knew about that. And there had been brief mentions of the Brotherhood, always with derision—a misguided cult of technology, a danger to the people, traitors to America, et cetera.

She had always assumed there were many small bases like Yerba Buena, hidden along the coast, but she wonders now if she had drastically overestimated their numbers. How many had been “suppressed” by this Republic allied with the Brotherhood?

You missed one, she thinks wryly. Or perhaps they didn’t. Perhaps, after their departure, Yerba Buena too was destroyed. She doesn’t know what she should feel. It gives her a hollow feeling in her stomach, thinking about it.

She asks no more questions. They continue their walk in silence.

 

In the morning, when she arrives at the lab, Elder Lyons is waiting for her.

 

_“James,” you protested, “turning to the Brotherhood is madness! If they know we’re Enclave, we’re asking to be shot on sight. To say nothing of what Major Autumn will have done to us if we’re caught. We’re already defectors. You want us to become traitors too?”_

_“We’re already traitors, Madison.” James’ smile was sad. “We destroyed military property. You think that makes us anything less? If we’re caught, we’ll be executed. That’s the beginning and the end of it. We may as well seek protection where we can. Besides, I have a plan.”_

_Catherine squeezed your hand. “It can work, Madi. Hear him out.”_

_You listened._

_“We needn’t join the Brotherhood outright. We need only offer them something they want, something they need—something for which they need us. For which they’ll protect us.”_

_You sighed, gesturing to yourself and to the two of them, to your dirty clothes and meager supplies. “What could we possibly have to offer them in this state, James?”_

_Catherine smiled. “I have an idea about that.”_

 

“Ah, good, Madison.” Elder Lyons rubs his hands together. “Exactly who I wanted to see.”

Madison wonders what would happen if she just called him _Owyn_ right here in the middle of his own HQ. Seems only fair, if he’s going to address her with such familiarity. “Yes?”

“I’m hoping you have good news for me, regarding the status of Liberty Prime.”

“That depends on what you mean by ‘good news,’” Madison replies, warily.

“I will speak plainly. Is Prime ready for deployment today?”

She stares. “You’re kidding, right? Look, Lyons, I’ve adjusted the couplings and the sensors, I’ve done what I can with the existing batteries which isn’t much, but it’s all untested! This… _device_ hasn’t seen daylight in two centuries. We don’t even know for certain that it will walk properly, much less hold up in combat. At least give us a day to haul it up to the bailey and perform some basic tests.”

Lyons strokes his beard with infuriating calm. “Madison, I assure you that were the circumstances not what they are I would certainly take your cautions under advisement. As it is, the eyes of the Enclave are everywhere—”

“And yet I’ve managed to keep my work off their radar for twenty years.”

“You are not forty feet tall and armed with tactical nuclear weapons.”

“Regrettably.”

“One of our main advantages in this assault will be the element of surprise, and we must make full use of that advantage. We can hardly afford to show our hand and give them opportunity to prepare. An enormous robot marching up and down the river will not go unnoticed.”

Madison sighs.

“Elder, I must say that I’m with the doctor here.” Rothchild spreads his hands. Madison shoots him a surprised glance. “Prime is _not_ ready. The power issue alone has consumed most of our attention—the weapons aren’t calibrated, the navigation detection system is still offline—it’s not even _ready_ for field tests, let alone live fire. This is foolhardy and I would like my objection noted alongside Dr. Li’s, for the record.”

Madison exhales. There is a long silence.

“Your objections shall be noted,” Lyons says gravely. “Please do what you can to prepare Liberty Prime for deployment. And thank you both for your diligence.”

Rothchild nods. “Thank you, sir.”

Madison remains silent until Lyons is out of the lab.


	5. ...

_You said your farewells in a little service in the Rivet City chapel, Deacon Clifford officiating, reading from an ancient Bible, its leather cover cracked and crumbling away at the corners. “For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted…”_

_James wept. He wept openly, without a hand to wipe his face, both arms occupied with holding the infant. You didn’t offer to hold it. You stood with your arms at your sides and you set your jaw and you pressed your lips together and you kept your spine ramrod straight and your eyes dry._

_James wanted a religious ceremony, of course, and you knew Catherine would be amenable to that, so you didn’t argue._

 

_ _

 Illustration by [Ialpiriel](http://ialpiriel.tumblr.com/).

 

_He gave you a chance to be the child’s mother. A chance you refused. You didn’t want children. You certainly didn’t want to crawl inside some new vault, form a neat little nuclear family and pretend it would ever be okay again without her._

_Maybe you weren’t a substitute for his beloved Catherine. Maybe he loved you just as much. You know she did. “I know it wasn’t the plan, Madi,” she had said softly, running her gentle fingers over your hand. “But…”_

_The “but” always went unfinished. But she was sorry? But it couldn’t be helped? But you’d grow to love it? But things wouldn’t change so much would they? But she loved you just as much? But you’d be just as much the baby’s mother?_

_You never wanted to be a mother. Not to Catherine’s child, or James’, or anyone’s child and certainly not your own. (And did he love you less for that, just a little less, for all you would never propagate your pure human genes with his?)_

_But Catherine wanted a child, and was that so wrong? She loved you as much as James, maybe more, she gave both of you everything she had, was it so wrong for her to want this one damn thing for herself?_

_One thing, and for that one thing you lost them both._

 

_You began to lose their faces in small increments. There were no pictures. No cameras. You’d barely had sterile scalpels, nobody’d had anything like a camera since leaving California so of course there were no pictures._

_His face went slowly. You saw him when you didn’t want to. Building hydroponic tables, formulating a nutrient solution, taking cuttings from the live specimens that flourished, you would see his face, suddenly, amid some hazy conception of another vault. James in a steel box under the ground, in his white coat. As dead to you as Catherine._

_For weeks, months, all you could see of Catherine was the way she looked on the surgical table as her last breath shuddered out and her beautiful dark eyes fell closed. James’ frantic hands performing chest compressions long after she was gone, pleading “Come on, Catherine,” and as the minutes stole away with her heartbeat, quieter and more desperate entreaties to that God he still believed in._

_You rolled the baby’s cart aside, put your lips to Catherine’s to breathe for her as James pumped her heart in vain, and through your mind spun every little thing you could do if you had proper equipment, a defibrillator, oxygen, an Auto-Doc, all the things promised to you in the new lab you never reached, all the things that were a matter of course in the old life, before you ran, before you threw it all away._

_If you were more like James, if you had held out hope for longer, hoped for a miracle beyond all possibility--maybe you would also have warped those choices in your mind the way he did. Erased Catherine’s agency, assigned blame so that the living carried the brunt of it. Our fault. We killed her. If we’d only been at Raven Rock…_

_James never voiced those thoughts in so many words, but if you knew him, you knew. They were present in every sigh, in the slope of his shoulders, the weight in every step. He blamed himself. And you too, by extension. Both of you were there. You both did everything you could, and it was not enough. He blamed himself, so he must have blamed you too._

_You were angry about that._

_You’re still angry._


	6. Departure

They bring Joan back in a Vertibird, with Sarah.

Over the crackly PA system, she hears her name called: _“Dr. Li, please report to the infirmary at once. We have personnel in dire need of medical attention…”_ She moves automatically, swiftly and fluidly as though in a dream, and the steel walls rush past her in a blur, and only when she arrives, sees them laid out side by side, do things slow down and down and down until she can feel each second pass as a single brilliant, terrible frame.

They don’t _look_ injured, either of them.

Sarah is stripped of her power armor, the undersuit appearing unscathed. Joan’s armor bears no more than the usual share of scuffs and scorches. She declined to wear the offered suit of T45 for the battle. Too heavy, she said, too cumbersome. She likes to move light and quick. Her black combat armor would suffice. And it has.

Except neither armor can protect against radiation.

Elder Lyons is at Sarah’s side, brow heavily creased. Not just his prize Sentinel, but his daughter lies here in critical condition. At Joan’s side is Star Paladin Cross, and it is her eyes that meet Madison’s. Lyons doesn’t look up from his daughter.

Madison feels herself shift into triage mode, though it’s been years since she performed as any kind of a medical doctor. She hears herself speak as though it’s someone else, bringing out what Catherine always called her “command voice”—the one she learned from the officers, long ago, a tone no one dares disobey. She calls for clean water, RadAway—Star Paladin Cross is speaking, telling her there was a concussive blast, Joan and Sarah were both caught, there may be internal injuries in addition to the radiation—she calls for stimpaks, Med-X, and Alex is here bringing her the supplies—Daniel too, and Garza. Lyons is speaking, pleading with her to help Sarah, as though she might not, and she shoves a stimpak into his hands and tells him to inject her, quickly, in the upper thigh. Cross does the same for Joan without prompting.

Daniel brings her the RadAway, and Garza is already rolling the IV stand into place between the two beds. Madison moves to Joanie’s side first because she already has bare skin exposed between the arm guard and the hem of her t-shirt. She barks an order for Lyons’ to get Sarah’s arm exposed and out of the corner of her eye, she sees him comply, sees Cross move to help. She presses the skin just below the crease of Joanie’s elbow, finds the vein, takes the offered needle—Daniel has already hung the bag for her—and slides it home. Alex has Sarah’s IV in place before she rises.

For once, the world moves at her command. At the eye of the storm, Madison Li finds herself in full control.

She hesitates on the Med-X, watching both young women as the anti-radiation meds drip into their veins. RadAway is an effective chem, but not pleasant, and if there are internal injuries, there will be worse pain yet. But as long as they remain unconscious, she should conserve the painkillers. Save them for when they wake up.

If they wake up.

She calls for assistance getting Joanie’s breastplate off, fumbling with the buckles as Garza moves to help, pushing the girl’s t-shirt up over her ribs as soon as the plate slips free, looking for contusions, any sign of internal bleeding. Calls to Alex to get Sarah’s pulse as her own fingers find the beat in the hollow of Joanie’s wrist. The stims will begin to repair any tissue damage, but she must consider the possibility that she will need to perform surgery. She hasn’t done that in many years. Not since—

But if she must, she will be well-supplied, well-equipped, this time.

She begins to think, _If only—_ and stops herself short. For god’s sake, Madison. For once, let the past die.

 

Joan and Sarah continue to breathe. Their vitals stabilize, but neither of them regain consciousness as night falls over the Citadel. The bags of RadAway drain, and Madison detaches them and clamps off the lines but leaves their IVs in, for now. There is risk of infection, but she has disinfectant here, and sterile supplies… she would rather not risk having to stick either of them a second time. If they don’t wake by morning, both of them will need IV fluids, to combat the effects of the RadAway. The dehydration alone could kill them.

 

“You should get some sleep, Doctor. You said yourself there is nothing more that can be done.”

The urge to protest is automatic, but Madison resists it, because of course, Cross is right. It’s after midnight, and she’s done all she can, and the throbbing in her head has started up again, whether from the caffeine withdrawal or from stress she cannot tell. Even Lyons, vigilant by Sarah’s side, has slumped in his chair and begun to snore lightly. Suppose she can’t fault him for being weary after a hard day at war. Even if he did pass it commanding from the Citadel, and not on the front lines.

She shivers. “I don’t think I can sleep yet.”

“Rest, then. I do not require sleep, remember. I can keep watch, and wake you if their condition changes.”

Madison shakes her head. “Soon. I need… I need to sit.” She exhales. “Unwind.”

“Fair enough.” Cross nods, straightens as if to rise from her chair, then pauses as though having thought better of it. “Would you—like me to stay with you?”

“Yes.” She says it without thinking at all, her mind still on autopilot, and only after speaking does she realize how true it is—how deeply she wants _not_ to be alone, for once, in the solitude of the infirmary—with nothing to occupy her but the damnable past, the what-ifs and the if-onlys and every mistake they made. Any company would be preferable right now to her memories. But—especially Cross’s. “Yes, I’d like it if you stayed.”

Cross offers her a quiet smile. “Very well, Doctor.”

“Madison.” She startles even herself, and the surprise is evident on the Paladin’s face. “Please. Call me Madison.”

“Madison.” Her name sounds good—firm, warm, and friendly on Cross’s lips. None of the condescension of Lyons’ tone, none of—well, she supposes she doesn’t mind Rothchild’s standoffishness all that much, when it comes to that, but when is the last time someone called her by her first name, as a friend? As an equal, even? “You may call me Erika,” Cross offers, “if you wish.”

“Erika,” she says, testing the name on her tongue, and then, “I never knew your first name.” Somehow it had never occurred to her to think of the Paladin _having_ a first name, which seems silly, in hindsight. Of course Cross—Erika—has a name. Under the armor, even with her cybernetic augmentations, she’s just a person, flesh and blood, a woman with a name. “Erika. Thank you.”

“You are welcome,” Erika says, and there is an odd look on her face—the look of a door left ajar, perhaps, an unexpected openness. And maybe a hint of wonder, at being startled into such vulnerability. They stare at each other, and Madison thinks that she likes Erika’s eyes very much, deep brown under silver brows. There is something handsome, elegant in the lines and the shape of her face.

Madison clears her throat, feeling suddenly parched, and rises to look for something to drink and perhaps ease her headache. Some besides those awful sugary colas Joanie likes so much. She finds bottled water in the refrigerator in the next room, and brings back two bottles, passing one to Erika, who smiles patiently and takes it without protest.

Madison uncaps hers for a long drink, then sets it aside as she settles back into her chair. “So. We won.”

“We won,” Erika affirms, casually setting aside her own water bottle, still capped. “The purifier is under our control once again.”

“I suppose I should go. See how it’s running. After they wake up…”

“I’m sure your team would be happy to go on ahead, and see to things.”

“They would.” But they aren’t me, Madison thinks. They won’t be able to stand up to your Scribes, your armed Knights on patrol. Daniel will try, but they won’t listen to him. Alex will try, but he’s too amicable, they’ll put him off. Anna… Anna might have held the Scribes at bay, but she’s gone, and likely dead.

The purifier is not under _her_ control. Not until she stands in the rotunda, takes the controls in her own hands.

She thinks, once again, of their empty science bay in Rivet City—their abandoned work. What might be salvageable, if they return. But to run the lab and oversee the purifier all at once. Impossible. At least, without a much larger team, people to whom she can delegate more responsibility…

Her head spins, and so she pulls back from that line of thought.

“It was Joan who went in,” Erika continues, her eyes turning to look at the girl, where she lies breathing evenly on the bed. “After you radioed. It was either her or Sarah—they were arguing about it, Sarah said it should be her, her power armor would protect her from the radiation. A falsehood, of course. We’ve only a few of the lead-lined models here, and Sarah’s is not one. Joan surely knew that.”

Madison is quite sure Joanie did know that. She’s too smart not to.

“You didn’t stop her,” she says, before she can stop herself. It’s not fair. No one should demand such a sacrifice of another. And yet it was she, on the radio, who called for it, the readings on her remote terminal inarguable, _“You must activate the purifier at once!”_

“I did not. I say they argued, but… it all happened very quickly. A matter of seconds. They both knew there was no time, they both knew whoever went in most likely would not survive. Sarah said it should be her, she was ready to do it. But you know how quick Joanie is.”

Madison nods.

“She kissed Sarah. Caught her off guard. Said something to her—I didn’t catch it. I was down by the entrance, holding off the Enclave forces. They were still coming, you see. Then she was inside and had closed the bulkhead. Sarah was… pounding on the glass, shouting her name.” There is pain on Erika’s face, deeper and more pronounced than Madison has seen from her before, all her steel and stoicism seeming to melt away.

“You did all you could,” Madison says, hoping to smooth over the harshness of her earlier remark. “I’m sure you did.”

Erika’s brow furrows deeply. “The explosion was… unexpected. I suppose it must have come from the buildup of pressure you warned about. You would know better than I. I confess, I understand little of the science behind the purifier… regardless. I was just far enough from its radius, I suppose. I certainly felt the force of it. Knocked me over but not out. Sarah was thrown from the walkway, the bulkhead was breached and Joanie was thrown clear.” She turns again to look at the girl, touches her hand with uncharacteristic tenderness. “That may have saved her life… if she wakes.”

In his own chair, the sleeping Elder stirs, snorting slightly in his sleep. They both grow silent, watching him, but he slumbers on.

Madison surveys the unconscious young women, looking from one to the other. “So there is something between them, then. I had thought.”

Erika’s smile is fond. “Yes, I had suspected as well.”

“Does Lyons know?”

“If he does, it is of no consequence. He is no traditionalist, as you well know. I suspect he plans to ask Joan to join the Brotherhood outright, and if she does not… well, I very much doubt he would deny Sarah happiness. She is the light of his life… you didn’t see him, when we first brought them in. He was nearly in tears, as distraught as I’ve ever seen him, and I have served at his side a long time.”

Madison cannot imagine the Elder weeping. But then, he too is only human. Just a man.

“He is a good man,” Erika adds, her voice softening further. “I know you have your disagreements with him. I can understand why. But I… I owe him my life. He and Rothchild. He placed my life above the Codex, Madison. I don’t know if you can understand what that means. But he has been a true friend to me, besides an Elder. And he loves his daughter.”

Madison doesn’t know how to respond, so she says instead, “Sarah is a remarkable young woman.”

“As is Joan.” Erika’s eyes meet Madison’s again, the weight of worry heavy in her gaze. “In your… honest opinion. Will they recover?”

“As far as injuries go… if they make it to morning, they should be out of the woods. It’s the radiation that concerns me. I have no way of knowing how much they took, especially Joan. For that, it’s a waiting game.”

Erika nods gravely. “Then we wait.”

“Indeed.” Madison attempts to stifle a yawn. Sleepiness has been creeping up on her all the while, but she’s hated to cut their conversation short. Erika’s presence is a comfort. But she’s right that Madison needs sleep.

“Will you keep an eye on them,” she says, asking even though she knows the answer, “while I try and catch a little sleep? I’ll just be in the next room. Please wake me if there’s any change.”

“Of course, Madison.” Erika’s smile is confident once again, the steel returning to her countenance, yet the warmth is still there. “Sleep well. I will keep watch.”

Naturally she has no sense of how tired she really is, until she lies down, her limbs at once so heavy she could sink to the center of the earth. Her eyes close willingly, her breath evens, and for the first time in many years Madison falls asleep under the watch of a power-armored soldier, and rests easy.

 

Despite her hopes, Joanie and Sarah do not wake. Stable, but unconscious, they lie side by side, the next day and the day after, and another day and another. They show signs of life—strong respiration, occasional eye movement indicating brain activity, but they do not wake up. Bruises yellow and then begin to fade from their skin. The plasma burn on Joan’s left cheek is patchy, still showing some discoloration as the skin heals into a hard ridge of scar tissue.

Madison tries in vain to get working an old heart rate monitor she finds in the back of the infirmary, but the machine is pre-war and has taken too much damage; it won’t even turn on. When her thoughts turn to times when she had better equipment, newer and better-kept and more precise equipment, she pushes those thoughts away. This is now. What she has is what she has.

She takes her meals with Erika in the dining room, at the corner booth where they may have relative solitude, and Erika takes a cup of tea and even drinks it while Madison eats.

She tries not to hover over the girls. There’s nothing to be done for them but wait. Elder Lyons has returned to his duties, though he still looks in on Sarah multiple times a day. Lyons’ Pride is under the command of the humorless Paladin Tristan. He was the one who helped carry them both back, or so Erika tells her. She hasn’t seen him visit the infirmary. Tristan is a good Brother, Erika says. He just doesn’t know the meaning of R and R. And you do? Madison asks, raising an eyebrow. Erika only laughs.

 

Madison needs to return to Project Purity.

She’s been putting it off for days.

There is no longer the excuse that Joan and Sarah need her care, because it’s a waiting game now, and has been ever since they stabilized; she can say she wants to be here, just in case anything goes wrong, but if something goes wrong now—if either of them did receive a lethal dose of radiation, when the latency period ends, there will be nothing she can do.

The purifier is running, or so they tell her. The culmination of years of work, the realization of their dream—Catherine’s dream, James’ dream, and hers too—and yet she just feels _bad_ whenever she thinks about it. Off. Distressed, in a way she has avoided pondering.

It was all done without her. Completed while she was shut up in the Citadel, no contact but a radio. Rationally, she knows she could not have gone; no one could have kept her safe in the firefight, not even Erika.

And now she thinks of the Memorial crawling with Brotherhood Scribes, putting their hands all over her work, and Catherine’s work, and James’s work, and she feels a bit sick, if she’s being honest.

So she should go back, but the thought fills her with a weary dread.

 

When it has been nearly a week, and the nagging at the back of her mind has gotten so bad it disrupts her sleep, wakes her in the pre-dawn hours with her heart racing, she steels herself and puts the question to Erika over lunch.

“Erika, I need an escort to the Purifier.”

“I was wondering when you would ask.” Erika nods. “I will inform Elder Lyons, and we will leave at once.”

She notices that the Paladin says _inform_ rather than _request,_ and despite her anxiety, permits herself a small smile.

 

The road to the Jefferson _looks_ like war—more than usual, that is. They don’t call it _the wasteland_ for nothing, and Madison has marched through her share of rubble, but now the debris is fresh, the stench of death and ozone still ripe in the air, puddles of congealed plasma pitted into the concrete, dull-green and stinking. Erika is solemn as they walk, rifle in hand, dark eyes surveying the scene. “Paladin Vargas fell here,” she says, startling Madison as they cross the long crumbling bridge. “He was the Sentinel’s right hand. She will mourn his passing. As will we all.”

Madison knew, of course, that the Brotherhood had suffered losses, but it is just hitting her now, that Erika has lost many people she knew. She hasn’t spoken of it until now.

“I’m sorry,” she says simply.

Erika nods. “Thank you.”

 

The scene at the exterior of the Memorial washes over her with eerie familiarity: the perimeter patrols, the sentries at each entrance and pacing the long metal walkway. A Knight pauses at one corner, raises the scope of a customized laser rifle to eyes obscured by a steel helmet, sighting down to the supermutant camp entrenched barely up the road.

Joanie mentioned that camp, Madison remembers. Said she’d cleared it out at least three times, cutting loose kidnapped wanderers, ushering them hastily out of the city ruins with dire warnings not to come out here scavving again armed with some pea-shooter. Didn’t matter. The mutants kept coming, moving back in, and the scavvers kept wandering into downtown, hoping to dig something valuable out of the vast morass of crumbled concrete and asphalt. There’s nothing _here_ , Joanie said, exasperated, spreading her hands. Nothing you couldn’t get from the junk traders, nothing worth getting your limbs hacked off for. Better to stomach mole rat jerky than risk your life for a box of Sugar Bombs.

Satisfied none of the mutants are wandering southeast, the Knight lowers the weapon, and continues their patrol.

It could be twenty years ago. The same mutants, the same Knights. The same nonfunctioning machine, river water chugging ineffectually through its pipes, pooling in the subbasement chamber where they tested it and retested it, looking for some statistically significant change.

But inside, everything has changed.

 

Madison knew Lyons’ Scribes would have insinuated themselves into the newly-functioning facility as quickly as possible. Knew, too, that her own delay in returning was in some measure an invitation to do so, that personnel would have to be sent to monitor the purifier in her absence.

So she is prepared for the Brotherhood presence, and yet unprepared.

There are so many of them. Daniel is arguing with a red-robed Scribe when they enter, glaring and gesturing sharply the way he does when he gets agitated. Daniel has never been a patient man, but his voice remains at a controlled volume—thus far. Madison bypasses them for now. Erika defers subtly but fully to her lead the moment they are safely inside the complex, falling a half a step behind her without a word.

She can hear it, and in the rush and chatter of Scribes, this is what she focuses on: the deep rumbling chugging sounds beneath her feet, the sound of the purifier running continuously. _Working._

She stops for a moment, stock still in the middle of the Memorial Lobby (Erika does not prod, or question her), closes her eyes, and just _listens,_ and for a moment, just a moment—all the rest vanishes. The battle, the Brotherhood, the girls, the uncertainty of the future. All of it drowned out by that sound.

Clean water.

She does not think of either of them, or of which would be more proud. Only of that sound.

Water.

 

But the reverie cannot last, and after a minute Madison opens her eyes and shakes herself out of it and proceeds to battle station. She is dressed in her own clothes today, and though they aren’t pressed, they are freshly laundered, her blouse tucked in, her skirt straight, the collar of her coat lying crisp and white. The borrowed shoes do not have quite the same sharp, pleasing sound on the tile floor as her heels did, but still, she holds her head high.

She feels a certain pleasure noting that the Scribes occupying themselves at various terminals do so with pensive expressions, as though still trying to decipher the data before them.

She takes less pleasure in the fact that none of them greet her, or acknowledge her presence. But perhaps that will make things easier. Only two Scribes occupy the rotunda, one poking at the external console, the other at the console behind the bulkhead.

The jolt she feels stepping into the rotunda is unexpected. Memory assaults her suddenly and without warning, the roar of the Vertibird and the swarms of black helmets and the sealed bulkhead and—

“Madison?”

Erika’s voice comes from behind her. She feels rooted to the spot, helpless, the bulkhead is sealed and no one can stop them, no one can stop him. The Vertibirds are coming for all of them, they will never be free—all of this was suicide, all of it foolhardy and a waste—

She gasps for her breath, finds herself clutching the doorframe.

“Janice,” she bites out. “James—where are they?”

A hand presses between her shoulder blades, steadying her slightly. She doesn’t pull away.

“Madison.” The Paladin’s voice is firm, strong, real, present.

She knows what day it is. She knows why she is here. She knows they are gone, Janice and Anna, Catherine and James.

“I mean their bodies,” she says, finding her balance, but keeping a hand on the wall, just in case. One of the Scribes is looking at her. “Janice, and James, Anna… What have they done with them?”

“I don’t know,” Erika says quietly, apologetically. “They had already been removed when our forces arrived.”

Of course they would have been. Madison lets her breath out slowly. Controlled. They are not here. They’re gone. The Knights outside will defend the facility against attack. No one is going to die in this room today.

She thinks of Joan sealing the bulkhead, Sarah pounding on it screaming her name, and she feels the urge to scream herself.

But at least she’s back in the present.

She can do this.

 

“Excuse me,” Madison says to the Scribe in the central chamber. Calm. Professional. As if it was her lab in Rivet City. This is just another laboratory. Just another workspace. There are no bodies on the floor.

The Scribe glances up from whatever it is she’s been doing. She’s young, dark-eyed, with simple bobbed black hair. “Oh, Doctor Li. You’re here. I assume Scribe Bigsley spoke with you?”

“Scribe who now?”

“Bigsley. He’s in ch—ah, he’s been overseeing our operations here. Should be in the gift shop office. I know he wanted to see you when you arrived.”

“I’ll be sure to touch base with him,” Madison says, making no move to leave. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I’m going to check the power readings.”

“Oh—of course.” The Scribe moves out of the way, her willingness surprising Madison until she she realizes the Scribe is peering over her shoulder at the login screen, and trying to look as though she isn’t.

“I didn’t catch your name,” Madison says with cool politeness, fingers pausing on the keyboard.

“It’s Scribe Tanaka,” the young woman offers, smiling innocuously.

“Scribe Tanaka, would you please find Bigsley for me and let him know I’ve arrived? I didn’t see him in the office when I came through. Perhaps he stepped out.”

Tanaka’s eyes widen with hesitation, then she nods. “Yes—of course, Doctor.”

The power readings are good, better in fact than Madison would have expected, given the recent damage to the reactor. But she’d taken care to space the fusion cells as much as possible so that a failure in one would not necessarily trigger a chain reaction and lead to a catastrophic event. It seems her caution has paid off. She takes a moment to change her login credentials, just to be safe, and moves on from the rotunda before Tanaka can return with Bigsley.

The Scribes’ work looks to have been mostly observation thus far; they’ve done no damage to the systems, thank goodness. She needn’t concern herself with their interference, then. No, her real curiosity lies in how the purifier was modified while it was out of their hands.

She wants to see what the Enclave did to Project Purity.

 

Madison goes to the sub-basement alone. What she needs to do, she assured Erika, would only be boring to an observer, and she can sense a bit of relief when the Paladin agrees to remain on the ground floor until they’re ready to depart. Privately, she hopes Cross will take some time to chat with the Scribes herself, perhaps find out what the Brotherhood’s plans are. With the purifier functioning, with her team so reduced, and with the Enclave’s continued interest in the project an undeniable reality, she has no illusions that Lyons intends for his people to serve as passive guards. It goes without saying that he will expect a greater share in their work now. It only remains to be seen how much he expects to take from her.

She doesn’t stop moving long enough to ask herself if it will be worth it.

 

What remains of the G.E.C.K., she finds in one of the downstairs storage rooms. Strange. She expected, somehow, that it would be… bigger. Or more impressive. If it weren’t for the letters embossed on either side of the steel case, she might not have recognized it at all.

What she does recognize is the row of seed packets, undisturbed in the case, in their bright white paper packets, with the familiar flag printed on them, their surfaces waxy-smooth. The soil supplement tablets are not precisely what she’s accustomed to, but close enough, though undoubtedly far more potent. Several holodisks remain slotted into the case, and it is that, more than anything else, that convinces Madison the Scribes haven’t found this yet. They would’ve taken everything, but especially those disks. No, the Enclave must have taken what they needed for the purifier and left the rest. The seeds, the fertilizer, whatever data is contained on these disks—all of it would be precious to the communities dwelling in the wasteland, redundant to the agents of the good old U.S.A., who made these kits in the first place, and now live sequestered with their unimaginable technology, safe underground.

Pocketing as many of the seed packets as she can unobtrusively carry, she feels a strong sense of deja-vu.

She notes the size and shape of the slots missing their components—one large, one so small as to be easily missed.

Could it be true, then? The G.E.C.K. was rumored to contain some kind of cold fusion device, and if that were true, it _would_ have solved many of the power issues they encountered. Their filtration model was sound. It was keeping it powered that was the problem. Every time they tried, they were forced to shut down to prevent the reactor going into meltdown. And without the purifier running consistently long-term, there was no hope of purifying the whole tidal basin.

But now…

She visits the water testing chamber next, checks and double-checks every readout just to be sure. But the data on the ground floor console wasn’t false. The water is clean.

Whatever the G.E.C.K. contained has solved their power problem. James was right about that much.

Project Purity works.

 

Madison supposes she’d better see this Bigsley, at least to keep up appearances, and so she drops by the gift shop office, where a rather scruffy-looking young man is hunched over a terminal with a resting glare on his face. It seems despite Scribe Tanaka’s instructions, he hasn’t been trying terribly hard to find her. He looks up when she appears in the doorway. “Well, Dr. Li. You’ve decided to drop by at last. No need to concern yourself, I suppose, since everything’s been running fine without you. Was there anything you needed, or?”

“Not from you,” Madison says coolly. “I suppose you and your people haven’t had any trouble settling in.”

“Settling in, no, figuring out how this whole operation is going to work, well. I don’t suppose you and your crew had—have—a viable plan for distribution? Sooner or later, you know, word’s going to get out that we have clean water here. We can’t exactly wait for a crowd to amass on our doorstep.”

Madison shakes her head. “Surely we’ve some time yet before we concern ourselves with distribution? The basin won’t be fully cleared for weeks yet. Possibly months, depending on runoff and groundwater contamination, among other variables.”

“Well, we ought to be doing something with all the water coming through this facility that _is_ cleaned up, don’t you think? Some kind of bottling operation’ll have to be set up, get the water out to the poor saps that need it right now. Not everyone out there has a riverfront view, you know.”

“Bottling—surely you don’t intend to _sell_ the water.”

Bigsley snorts. “Well, I certainly would if I were in charge, but as I’ve been reminded more than once, I’m not. You can take that one up with Lyons. Still have to move the H2O somehow.”

Madison shakes her head. “You misunderstand. Bottling was never the intent. Every stable township in the Capital Wasteland has a small-scale purifier—if the point was to let everyone come fill a jug we’d have accomplished our goal twenty years ago, surely you realize that? The purpose of Project Purity is to clean up the tidal basin, the river. Given enough time, the effects will eventually spread to the groundwater, creating a viable water table suitable for well-drilling. Possibly even agriculture, one day. Containing the purified water, rather than allowing it to flow back into the basin, will only delay that process.”

Bigsley shrugs. “Well, like I said, take it up with Lyons. I’ve got my orders here.”

 

Madison is quiet as they travel back to the Citadel in the gathering dusk, lost in thought until she’s startled out of it by a blast of laser fire from Cross, dropping a centaur some fifty feet ahead, directly in their path. Madison’s stomach turns—whether from the sound, the smell, or the repulsive creature itself lying dead as they pass, she doesn’t know. She’s more tense from then on, knowing centaurs mean super mutants close by, but Cross is vigilant, and they encounter no more trouble.

Back inside the Citadel, a weariness overcomes her. She’s no more tired from the walk than she should be, but images accost her mind unrelentingly: the surface of the test pools gleaming dark, the empty spaces in the steel case, Scribe Bigsley’s irritated countenance—and memories more distant and far less welcome. With the news that there has been no change in Joan’s condition or Sarah’s, she feels neither sorrow nor relief, only a creeping numbness. The row of holodisks flashes in her mind unbidden, and she feels agitated at having left them behind—was it foolish, sentimental even, to take the seeds instead? What exactly did she hope to accomplish in closing the case, concealing it under an old wooden crate, locking the storeroom door behind her? Was it just spite? Surely the Scribes will crawl the whole place over eventually and find what was left behind. Those disks, whatever they contain, will be collected into the Scribes’ databanks, alongside their caches of Vault-Tec records, vast stores of information they have neither the time nor the manpower to fully read and appreciate.

The anger she should be feeling seems blunted instead, suppressed by a deep mental exhaustion.

 

“You’ve missed supper,” Erika points out.

Madison has no idea what time it is. She supposes that’s true. She supposes she might be hungry.

“I’d be happy to bring you something,” the Paladin continues, “if you’d prefer to stay here.”

She isn’t sure what she’d prefer. Sitting in the infirmary watching Joan and Sarah breathe seems pointless. There isn’t much that doesn’t seem pointless right now. She supposes she should eat.

“No,” she says. “I don’t.”

 

Madison hardly tastes her food, but eating seems to bring some feeling back, stave off the weariness at least a little. Erika gives her a few minutes to eat in silence before she says, “What happened at the purifier. Would you like to… talk about it?”

She pauses. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You suffered a traumatic experience when last you were there. You lost friends. It is completely normal that you would find it difficult to return.”

She doesn’t protest that assessment.

“I have seen many comrades fall in battle. It is not something that one ever gets used to.”

“Does one ever get used to seeing one’s work casually appropriated?”

Erika folds her hands, dark eyes regarding Madison thoughtfully, not without sympathy. “I… don’t imagine one does, no.”

“I guess you wouldn’t know about that.”

“I guess that I would not. My life’s work has been the Brotherhood. I am the Brotherhood, and it is me. As each part of the body is itself the body.”

Listlessly, Madison pushes her food in circles with her fork. “I should hope that isn’t all you are.”

Cross tilts her head slightly, curious. “And why would you hope that?”

Taking another bite allows her to stall from answering. Her companion waits patiently. Madison swallows self-consciously. “Because you have become… you have been a good friend to me, in the time that I’ve been here.”

Erika nods, slowly. “And can I not be both Brotherhood, and your friend?”

Why only now does the pain of it stab so deep? Why _now_ does she feel, desperately, terribly, that she’s lost everything? What is the loss—Catherine, James, Janice, Anna, the purifier, her lab, Joan, her life’s work—what’s the worst of it? And what’s _next?_

She says, “I don’t know.”

She sees the hurt flash across Erika’s face, only for an instant.

 

“I don’t know that I should stay.”

Her confession comes on their way back from the dining room. Back to where, Madison doesn’t quite know—to her room, maybe, to try and sort her head out. She almost doesn’t mean to say it out loud, but at the same time, it doesn’t seem a great revelation. It seems obvious, to her, that she would be considering her options. And yet Erika actually stops short and looks at her, clearly taken aback. “What do you mean?”

“Just what I said. I don’t know that I should stay. I can’t see what’s left for me here.”

“But the purifier—surely you don’t intend to leave your project, just as it’s working?”

Madison laughs harshly. “ _My_ project? It’s nice that you think so, but it won’t be. Not if Lyons has anything to say about it. And even then, what makes you think I could just—walk back in there, every day, as though nothing has happened? As though—”

She breaks off sharply, feeling her anger surge at long last. It’s almost a relief, the righteous heat flooding her veins.

“Where would you go? Back to Rivet City?”

That brings her up short. She’d always assumed that was what she _would_ go back to, if she went back. Of course. Crawl back to the Council, _ask_ them to take her back, let her try and salvage her experiments, or begin again. Rebuild the team she’s lost. And every time she walks up to the outer deck for a breath of fresh air, to look down the river, and watch Project Purity running along without her, steel-armored Knights marching back and forth guarding what she built. What the three of them built.

To watch them trample all over her work up close, or at a brief distance. What a choice.

“I—I don’t know,” she manages at last. “Maybe not.”

Erika’s brow furrows. “And Joan?”

“Joan’s a grown woman. She certainly doesn’t need me.” Madison sighs. “We don’t even know if she’s going to wake up.”

Erika looks pained. “She respects you a great deal, you know.”

“I—don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“You’ve lost a great deal. I understand. But so has she. How do you think she might feel, waking up and finding you gone, too?”

Madison bristles. “How dare you. How _dare_ you compare me to him. He chose to be her parent, Erika—I didn’t. I have always taken on James’ responsibilities where he asked me to and this one time— _this one time_ I choose not to—” her voice is rising with anger, she’s all but shouting now “—and you want to tell me it’s my duty. That it’s always my duty to do what _he_ would’ve done—” and now she is shouting. “I am not James, god damn it! I am not Catherine! I am _not her mother!”_

Madison stops to catch her breath. Erika is silent for a long time.

“I apologize, Madison. I don’t think I fully understood.”

“No,” Madison says coldly. Her hands are shaking. “You didn’t.”

“I didn’t intend to make it about James—”

“It _is_ about James! It’s _always_ been about James. _Everything_ is _always_ about _James._ ”

Erika draws a deep breath, shoulders rising and falling under the broad steel pauldrons of her power armor.

“Then—putting James aside. And Joan as well. What is it you want?”

Her fists uncurl, her breath releases. The fierce fire of her anger unfurls—no less furious, but directionless. _Helpless_ once again.

“I don’t know,” she said harshly, desperately. “ _I don’t know.”_

 

Erika’s quarters are the closest, when the Paladin suggests they speak somewhere more private. She doesn’t know what she expected, for Lyons’ second-in-command, but it’s not functionally different from her room: bed, desk, chair, a chest of drawers, a corner conspicuously empty—puzzling until Madison realizes it is a place to park her power armor when not in use. Everything sparse and neat, nothing out of place, an order and efficiency that seems to reflect Erika herself.

“Your relationship with James,” Cross says, offering Madison the desk chair. She doesn’t trail off, simply stops as though she had intended to stop there all along. It is not quite a statement. Not quite a question. It hangs in the air for a moment while Madison thinks of how to respond.

For there it is. In the air, in the water, in the steel walls and the laboratory and the seed packets still hidden in the pockets of her lab coat, from which she has not had a chance to remove them. It is in everything. In the soil under her feet, so to speak—seeping up like groundwater. Infusing everything, inescapable.

“And Catherine,” she says by way of an answer.

“Ah,” says Erika simply.

“It was complicated,” Madison adds, as though that explains anything. As though there are relationships that aren’t.

“And so, Joan…”

“Also complicated.”

“That is understandable.”

“She doesn’t know. And I’ve no intention of telling her. It’s all long in the past. There’s no need to complicate her life any further. Better she go on thinking I’m just some old friend of her parents.”

She half expects Erika to argue with that, but no argument comes. Erika nods thoughtfully, then rises from the bunk, walks to the empty corner of the room and with a creak and a brief beeping sound, the steel suit opens at the back—some complex mechanism Madison has never before seen in action. The Paladin steps free, turns a latch of some kind that closes the steel plates back in on themselves, and steps around the enormous steel shell to return to her seat. The effect is startling. Erika still is not a small woman, well over Madison’s height and lean but muscular. Madison doesn’t mean to stare, truly, but she’s never seen the woman in just her tan undersuit, never seen the real shape of her without armor.

“I was fond of Catherine,” Erika says aloud, musingly, gazing into the corner as if into the distance, “for what little I knew of her. I only met her a few times, briefly. She seemed to me to be brilliant, very dedicated to her work—and very fond of you. James I knew better. It was I who escorted him across the wastes to Vault 101, you see, with the baby. We spoke quite a bit along the way.”

“That was you,” Madison says, surprised. “I never knew.”

“It was me.” Erika lapses into a pensive silence, then adds, “I had great admiration for them both, for all of you. But I did not know them as you did.”

Madison sighs softly. “I wonder, sometimes, whether even I knew them as I did.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You live so closely with someone, work with them—” _fly with them thousands of miles, cling to them in stifling darkness for life or death—_ “you think you know them utterly, think you can predict them, and then—” She shakes her head. “I’m being foolish. James was always the same. Nothing he did should have surprised me. And yet—I think I always believed the work would settle him. That in time he’d become less reckless. Catherine was—she was perhaps the best of us, so smart, such an optimist, and yet… I think she brought out the worst of James, somehow. The impulsiveness. That never changed, except perhaps it got worse after she died. We were all so different, the three of us, but I thought—I thought we wanted the same things.” She sits silent for a moment, stares at her hands. “And then he ran. He ran away, and I wouldn’t. And I never forgave him.”

Erika nods.

They sit in silence for a bit, and Madison feels, not as though Erika is waiting for her to speak, but as though they are both waiting. Waiting for something to happen, for something to change.

She thinks of that question, _What is it you want?_ and finds no answers.

“If you wish to leave,” Erika says at last, “I understand. I will support you. You must do what you feel is right.”

Madison looks up, surprised. But less so than she might have been, even an hour ago. “Thank you.”

She stands. Perhaps she means to leave, retire for the night. Perhaps she means something else from the moment she rises. She can’t say quite why she crosses the room instead, and kisses Erika—stiffly, an unpracticed, unanticipated gesture. She can’t say what prompts it, or why it works, why it swiftly and suddenly changes all the qualities of light and shadow in the room—the dull steel and drab linens, the buzzy yellow fluorescent light, why it all suddenly feels terrifically sharp, a flash of something behind her eyes at the moment her lips meet Erika’s. Sudden like the scientist’s epiphany, like inspiration, like the moment the data comes together and you know something you did not know before.

Erika kisses her back, and her findings are verified.

It all feels suddenly _more_ than real, the slight chapped texture of Erika’s lips and the warmth of her mouth, Madison unhurriedly sliding off her lab coat, undoing a top button of her shirt, leaving to Erika the impossible complexity of her undersuit with its unreasonable quantity of snaps and hooks and zippers. The presence and heat of Erika’s skin against her own, the particular softness of maturity over well-kept muscle tone, and here and there the texture of something not quite flesh beneath the skin. The immediacy of touch, murmurs of question and affirmation.

 

The sense of presence, of being fully in the present, doesn’t fade all at once. It’s temporary, of course, but it lingers as the warmth between them, folded together in Erika’s bed. Madison has her hand resting against Erika’s side, below her ribs, where the ridges of scarring indicate the stretching and grafting of skin, and the terrain beneath her palm has the topography of an inorganic anatomy. (Faintly, in the back of her mind, she thinks of the tales of androids, the scientist she brushed off back in the city, the tapes from the synthetic man, the whispers of a place up north. But she nudges those thoughts away, lazily. No need to think about that right now.)

Her cheek lies against Erika’s breastbone, the thump and faint whir of her inner machinery rhythmic and soothing.

 

Madison almost laughs at herself when she wakes, rolling lazily over onto her side, tossing off the sheet. Erika is gone—up already, naturally, and gone about her duties. What tickles Madison is that she was left to sleep in. A sweet gesture, she has to admit.

She rolls out of bed, collects her clothes, and dresses, tucking in her blouse and smoothing her skirt as best she can after a night lying rumpled on the floor. A search of the desk turns up paper and pencil enough to serve for the task at hand.

She settles in to write.

 

> _Dear Joan,_
> 
> _I’m sorry to leave this way_

Madison crosses the lines out carelessly, begins again.

 

> _Dear Joan,_
> 
> _When you wake up, I will be gone. I am going north to the Commonwealth._
> 
> _Project Purity hasn’t been mine for a long time. I know you are the best person to continue the project if it is to be completed, not merely because you are Catherine and James’ daughter, but because you share their passion and determination._
> 
> _If you ever find yourself in the north, look for me at the Institute._
> 
> _Yours sincerely,_
> 
> _Madison Li_

She has no mirror with which to put up her hair, and she’s certainly lost some bobby pins under Erika’s bed, but Madison makes do. The final draft of the letter is folded in her pocket as she slips out of Cross’s room, glancing one way and then the other as she does so. There is no need to return to her own room, no belongings to collect—just those tapes, sitting on the desk, and to those she feels little attachment. No need to carry what would only weigh her down. She makes her way toward the dining room instead, hoping to scavenge something for a late breakfast.

A Scribe nearly charges her in the corridor. Rothchild must have some new task for her. Unsurprising. He’s to be disappointed.

“Dr. Li, there you are! I’ve been all over looking for you. She’s been asking for you all morning—”

“Slow down, slow down, who’s been asking for me? Paladin Cross?”

“No, no, Joanie. In the infirmary. She’s woken up.”

 

Joanie is already upright when Madison arrives, sitting cross-legged on her bunk in her t-shirt and fatigues, alternately flipping through her Pip-Boy and staring worriedly at Sarah on the adjacent bed. She is wan, her complexion still a bit ashen and eyes shadowed and bloodshot, but her whole face lifts when Madison walks in. “Dr. Li! Did it work? Did we start it in time?” The questions like coiled springs, waiting to be released—like she’s aware of how long she has been waiting to ask them.

“You did,” Madison says, coming to sit beside her on the edge of the bunk. “The purifier works.”

Joanie’s brown eyes widen. “It works? Then the G.E.C.K.—everything—we got it right?”

We, she says—not _Dad_ , not James, but all of them.

Madison likes the girl, she realizes. Would’ve liked to have a chance to know her better. If things had been different. But she’s done wishing things had been different. Things are what they are. And Joan understands things, better than most. _We_.

We got it right, Madison thinks. Something, at least. At last. We got it right.

“Yes,” she says, “we did.”

Joan’s eyes turn to her companion, brow furrowing. “They said I was out for two weeks—Sarah too.” Her voice breaks, slightly. “Is she gonna be okay?”

“I expect she will, yes. Since you’ve pulled through, the odds are good Sarah will wake up too.”

Joanie lets out a breath heavy with relief. “Oh, thank God.”

“I’m sure you’ll have a lot to catch up on,” Madison says, “but first things first, I’d like to see your Pip-Boy, to give you my login credentials for the Project Purity system. Of course you should rest before going back, but I want you to have them when you’re ready.”

Joanie blinks, eyes wide behind her thick glasses. “Oh—of course.”

She turns the knob to bring her Pip-Boy to life, the green glow reflecting off her face as she dials and clicks through the menus, then holds her arm out to Madison to input the credentials. Safe as houses, as they say. No one can unlock a Pip-Boy but the wearer. The Enclave certainly have means of bypassing the lock, but it will be safe from the eyes of the Brotherhood. They’ll have to go through Joan, at least for any major system changes.

“Don’t give these to anyone—that’s important. Not Rothchild, not Bigsley, not Lyons. The Brotherhood has enough power, and they will use it. Take what help you can get from them, but keep something to yourself, always.”

Joan will have access to the full databank stored on the mainframe. Everything they’d downloaded from the outpost terminals those many years ago, everything Catherine found, all in that databank, as well as all their research from Project Purity. She thinks briefly of explaining to Joan what she attempted to impress upon Bigsley regarding the purpose of the project, but decides against it. The girl is curious, voracious for knowledge—like her mother. She’ll go digging for herself, and she’ll find it all. What she does with it Madison must be content to leave to her.

She remembers the holodisks lined up untouched in the G.E.C.K.’s silver case, hidden under a crate, locked away in a storage closet. No doubt Joan will find those as well. Madison’s seen her with a screwdriver and a bobby pin; she’ll make short work of the lock. So those disks won’t go to waste, either. It’s a relief to know that.

“You’re leaving,” Joanie says quietly, startling her out of her reverie, “aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Madison says simply.

“Why?”

The girl’s directness surprises her. She could nice it up, make it sound better—career opportunities up north, a change of scenery—but no. She’s made the decision to give Joan what she can, before she goes. She can give her an honest answer, too.

“There’s no future for me here,” she says, looking Joanie right in the eye, deep brown eyes still very much like Catherine’s but not the same, she tells herself. Not Catherine, not James. “Only the past.”

She almost expects Joan to protest, reason with her to stay. Joanie swallows instead, looks away. Her gaze circles the perimeter of the room, landing on nothing, and returns to Madison. “Where will you go?”

“North to the Commonwealth.”

Recognition flashes across Joanie’s face, and she nods. “I’ve thought of going up there, maybe. Someday.”

“If you do,” Madison says, “you should look me up.”

For the first time since waking, Joanie cracks a smile. “I’ll do that.” She looks down, hands fidgeting with the hem of her t-shirt. “I’m staying here for now, though. Figure there’s still a lot of work to do.”

“I’m sure you’ll do it well,” Madison says, sincerely.

Joanie takes a deep breath, as though mustering her courage, but smiles. “Thanks.”

 

Erika is in the Citadel courtyard when Madison emerges into the morning sunlight. With any luck, she’ll be able to catch a caravan headed north from Rivet City today. She can follow the caravan to Canterbury Commons, trade her meager belongings for sensible walking shoes and traveling clothes. Perhaps do a little work in exchange for provisions and defenses for the road. Then the real journey begins.

“Paladin,” Madison says.

“Doctor,” Erika returns with a reserved smile. “I thought I might accompany you, just out of the city. For your protection, of course.”

“Yes,” Madison says, surprised. “I would like that.”

They proceed to the front gate, exchange cursory nods with the doorguard. Madison pauses as they step out onto the road, turns south one last time, and looks up the river.

Then she turns north, and puts it all behind her.

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would never have known about the potential latency period for radiation poisoning without having read [10 Gray, Give or Take](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7646888/1/10-Gray-Give-or-Take) by Sachehund, so even the brief mention of that warrants credit. Though a difficult read, it's an excellent fic, and one I highly recommend, provided the warnings don't put you off.
> 
> As with all my fics, I appreciate constructive feedback, and would love to hear from you in the comments what you thought of this story. Thanks for reading!


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